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Alabama won its fifth straight Iron Bowl on Saturday with a 28-14 victory over Auburn.
The result kept Alabama’s hope alive to reach the College Football Playoff and ended Auburn’s bid for a bowl game. The Crimson Tide won’t feel great about the performance, but while so many of their peers struggled during rivalry week, the Tide won’t apologize for winning the football game.
The Crimson Tide just needed to win. They just needed to avoid a second consecutive loss and make sure last week’s drubbing in Norman didn’t snowball. To that end, mission accomplished.
Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer becomes just the sixth head coach since 1948 to win his first Iron Bowl. Alabama’s 5 straight wins are the program’s longest streak in the series since winning 9 in a row from 1973-81.
Here are 3 takeaways from the game.
Effective, but certainly not clean
The good: Alabama produced 453 yards of total offense, averaged 6 yards per play, posted an 18% explosive play rate, and went 12-for-17 on third down.
The bad: Alabama gave up 7 tackles behind the line of scrimmage and turned the football over 4 times.
When Alabama wasn’t needlessly giving the ball away, Auburn couldn’t stop the operation. Jalen Milroe threw an interception and the team fumbled 4 times, losing 3 of them. Ryan Williams fumbled on the opening drive. Milroe fumbled on the first play of a drive late in the second quarter and then fumbled again early in the fourth.
The Alabama defense only gave up 6 points off the turnovers and generated 2 takeaways of its own.
Alabama scored touchdowns on 4 of its other 7 possessions. Those drives all featured chunk plays. Milroe produced 256 yards through the air as well as 104 yards and 3 rushing touchdowns on the ground. Jam Miller ran for another 84 yards. Germie Bernard caught 7 of his 10 targets for 111 yards.
Payton Thorne’s time ends in familiar fashion
No one will say Payton Thorne didn’t fight for Auburn. He did. He lost his job as a super-senior, then went right back into the lineup when Auburn needed to go back to him. In Auburn’s recent wins, Thorne threw 8 touchdowns against 2 interceptions. He topped 300 yards in the win over Texas A&M.
And he did that again Saturday night, but he also threw a game-ending interception with 2:41 to play in the fourth quarter while trying to force a ball to Rivaldo Fairweather. Alabama had just melted 7 minutes off the clock only to punt the ball to the Tigers near their own goal line. Thorne got Auburn out near its 30 before tossing up a dangerous ball under duress that was picked off by Alabama’s Zabien Brown.
With Auburn’s season done at 5-7, Thorne’s collegiate career is over. He’ll end his 2 years at Auburn with 37 touchdown passes and 19 interceptions. The good was good. The mistakes were too frequent.
Alabama gets help
The Crimson Tide weren’t going to make the College Football Playoff as a 3-loss team without help.
Miami lost to Syracuse. Ohio State lost an embarrassing game to Michigan. Clemson lost to South Carolina. Chaos has erupted over these final 2 weeks, and even though Alabama does not have any control over its Playoff fate, the Crimson Tide might be resting a little easier.
We’ll see what happens during Championship Weekend, but I’d venture Alabama is in a better position now than it was when the turkey was carved on Thursday. The Crimson Tide would love to see their résumé compared to Miami’s or South Carolina’s.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
