How Alabama turned around a disastrous season and ended up in the College Football Playoff

If you were looking for the low point of Nick Saban’s entire career at Alabama, you’d probably start in the bowels of Raymond James Stadium in Tampa back on Sept. 16. There, as a lightning delay halted play for more than an hour, Saban, soaked and seething, walked back to the locker room in the midst of a team that was Alabama in name only.

The Tide was losing — 3-0, yes, but still, losing — to the University of South Florida, a team they’d been favored to beat by five touchdowns. Alabama was already coming off its worst home loss in the Saban era, a double-digit throttling at the hands of a Texas team that looked larger, faster, sharper, more disciplined, more motivated — a whole lot like Alabama once did. And now, this atrocity in Tampa Bay.

On that September afternoon, not even the few Alabama fans at the stadium who could still muster up the energy for a Roll Tide would have expected anything out of this team. Two losses on the season seemed inevitable, three a strong possibility, and a dynasty-shattering four wasn’t out of the question.

Since that grim moment under the stands, though, Alabama hasn’t lost once. The Tide have thrived against the usurper Georgia, survived against rival Auburn, and enjoyed the good graces of the College Football Playoff selection committee. From a team everyone outside Tuscaloosa happily left for dead back in September, Alabama is now within a hairsbreadth of being the betting favorite to win yet another title.

How did the turnaround happen? Were the reports of the dynasty’s death greatly exaggerated? Is this Saban’s greatest coaching job ever? Or is this just Bama being its usual, unstoppable, inevitable self?

Alabama’s QB dilemma

Like alcohol is for Homer Simpson, the quarterback position for Alabama in 2023 was the cause of, and solution to, all the world’s problems. When your last four quarterbacks are all NFL starters, when those same four quarterbacks were Heisman winners or finalists, there’s really only one direction to go.

Just days before now-former Alabama maestro Bryce Young would be selected by Carolina as the 2023 NFL Draft’s No. 1 pick, Saban looked out at the crop of quarterbacks tasked with Alabama’s offense during the Tide’s spring game and grumbled. Presumed incumbent Jalen Milroe wasn’t seizing the moment, backup Ty Simpson wasn’t stepping up, and two freshmen weren’t yet ready. Tyler Buchner, a later transfer from Notre Dame, didn’t inspire confidence either.

Milroe, who had come on in relief of an injured Young last season, got the starting job pretty much by default. After Alabama executed a routine season-opening 56-7 thrashing of Middle Tennessee State, Texas came to town and proceeded to exploit every one of the flaws of Milroe and Alabama as a whole.

Against Texas, Milroe completed barely half his passes — 14 of 27 — and threw two back-breaking interceptions against two touchdowns. The entire team was undisciplined, committing 10 penalties, two of which resulted in touchdowns being taken off the board.

An infuriated Saban benched Milroe against South Florida and gave Buchner and Simpson a chance to start, which led directly to the near-disaster in Tampa. At that point, Saban and offensive coordinator Tommy Rees realized something had to change with the team as a whole and Milroe in particular, and with a dangerous and on-the-rise Ole Miss on the slate the very next week, they had little time to devise a solution.

How it all came together

As it turned out, the answers were right there in front of them. In most years, Alabama starts the season at full throttle, prepared to handle the onslaught of an SEC run from Day 1. This year, Alabama was like a sophomore who shows up late to class, disheveled and hung over, needing a kick in the pants to get its act in gear and shape up for the final exam. Texas delivered that kick, and Saban reinforced it.

Milroe is one of the fastest runners in the country, with an arm capable of knocking satellites out of orbit. But he was being forced by the early season game plan to sit in the pocket and cycle through progressions, and his indecision in the moment led to multiple rally-killing sacks — five against Texas alone — and tackles for loss.

Given the opportunity to cut loose, both through designed QB runs and by reducing the number of reads he needed to take, Milroe could play to his strengths. Nowhere was this more evident than the SEC championship, where he effectively ended Georgia’s championship run by extending drives with his legs. Opening up the game plan opened up opportunities; Milroe has thrown 10 touchdowns and just one interception since the start of November.

Milroe’s success paralleled the growth of his O-line, which spent most of the early season perplexing Alabama’s coaches and enraging its fans. Penalties, snap mistakes, an inability to contain or create holes — the group of four- and five-star recruits that made up the Tide’s O-line struggled through the first half of the season. The entire line, particularly true freshman Kadyn Proctor, seemed overmatched and overwhelmed by the moment. Alabama’s porous offensive line surrendered 43 sacks, 38 to Milroe alone. But over the last five games, the line has surrendered only eight sacks, a mammoth improvement.

As the line — especially Proctor — stepped up, so too did every other element of the Tide’s offensive game plan. Better protection meant fewer sacks. More time for Milroe in the pocket meant more time for Alabama’s receivers to get open downfield. As a result, Milroe ended the year grading out at 97 on Pro Football Focus’ 100-point scale for throws of 20+ yards. Twenty-five of his 64 deep attempts rated as “Big-Time Throws” — well-timed and precise — a stat that Auburn, in particular, knows all too well.

The end result: A guy who was benched against an easy out-of-conference opponent early in the year ended up ranking sixth in Heisman voting. There aren’t really advanced statistics for that sort of thing, but Milroe has to be the only quarterback in college football history to have that kind of turnaround.

“His transformation at the quarterback position has helped us transform our entire offensive team,” Saban said after the Auburn victory. “The confidence that he's playing with, the confidence that our players have in him. I think we've done a pretty good job of trying to utilize the skill set that he has.”

Alabama’s rushing attack — not one of this year’s strong points — stepped up as the offensive line found its footing. The culmination came in the crucial LSU game in early November, when Alabama continued its revenge tour by beating the Tigers at home. Alabama gained 288 yards on the ground — 155 by Milroe alone — a number that simply wouldn’t have been possible a few weeks earlier.

“The team has improved dramatically in terms of transformation of confidence, playing together, good leadership,” Saban said before the SEC championship. “But if you had to say where did we improve the most, I would say it's probably offensively. The transformation of Jalen Milroe at quarterback, to be productive, has been huge in terms of elevating the confidence of the entire offensive team. The improvement in the offensive line has helped us be able to have a little better balance in the game. The receivers have all played better. If there is a specific area, I would say that would be.”

Team discipline improved, too. Except for a sloppy 14-penalty game against Texas A&M and the typical chaotic eight-penalty game against Auburn, Alabama didn’t commit more than six penalties in any game after Texas. Against Georgia in the SEC championship, the Tide only drew three flags, part of the reason Alabama could stay in control of what had appeared to be a superior opponent.

Saban’s best job ever?

Has this been Nick Saban’s best coaching job ever? Yes and no. Granted, Saban did need to make many more midseason adjustments than he normally does, but this wasn’t a scrappy ragtag crew of misfits suiting up for Alabama. The Tide’s four recruiting classes since 2020 have ranked third, first, second and first, per Rivals. There’s coaching, yes, but some of that is just pointing the talent in the right direction.

“It's all about response,” Milroe said after the SEC championship. “The biggest thing that we have on this team that contributes to any success is the FAMILY acronym: Forget About Me, I Love You. I think we do a really good job about that. It was about singular focus each and every drive.” He was speaking of the victory over Georgia, but he could have applied that to virtually every post-Texas game this season.

One day the Saban dynasty will end (probably). Regardless of how the 2023 season finishes out, this year gave Alabama and its fans a good hard look at football mortality. The team and its fans responded by appreciating big-time wins over Tennessee, LSU, Auburn and Georgia as triumphs to be savored, not just routine checkmarks on a to-do list of entitlement. That in itself is enough to make this season one of the sweetest of Saban’s tenure.