Hayes: It's over, Alabama. Long live the king of college football
It’s time for some difficult, brutal truth. The unavoidable and undeniable truth.
Alabama is in decline. If you didn’t believe it before, you better embrace it after Texas exposed the flaws of the past 2 seasons for all to see.
Texas 34, Alabama 24 wasn’t as surprising as it was revealing.
This was a statement game for Alabama, a line in the sand, a chance to silence the haters and the doubters. And now look.
Texas has better players. Texas is the tougher team. Texas is the better coached team.
That Texas dominated Alabama shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise. The king of college football has been limping around for 2 years, and we all ignored it.
It couldn’t be more obvious now.
The magnificent run of Nick Saban at Alabama has hit the other side of the bell curve. When Saban declared the 2020 team his best ever, there was only 1 way to go.
The only thing that prevented a free fall the previous 2 seasons was the best player in college football: Bryce Young.
Young was so good, was such a magician on the field, was so dynamic and so unflappable, he found ways to win games that shouldn’t have been won.
Florida, LSU and Auburn in 2021, and Ole Miss and, yes, Texas in 2022.
This time, Young wasn’t around to save Alabama from the Longhorns. This time, it was Texas QB Quinn Ewers leading a Texas offense that had 5 plays of 30-plus yards in the defining 4th quarter.
It was Ewers toying with the Alabama safeties all game, manipulating them with his eyes and throwing for 349 yards and 3 TDs — including 2 beautifully thrown teardrop deep ball touchdowns that underscored the difference in talent at the most important position on the field.
Texas has a budding star in Ewers. Alabama has a project in Jalen Milroe.
More humiliating — and more telling to the Alabama decline — is the quarterback Alabama wanted under center in this game, is currently the 3rd-string quarterback for Texas (Arch Manning).
It’s not all Milroe’s fault. The problems at Alabama run much deeper and wider than quarterback. Young was so good the past 2 seasons, he delayed the inevitable after the 2020 season.
The magic in the Florida, LSU and Auburn games in 2021 bled over to 2022, allowing Saban and the Alabama faithful to use the crutch of 2 last-play losses in 2022 to prove that the program was still on firm ground. Saban even complained this offseason that Vegas — of all things — said Alabama should’ve been 1 of the 4 Playoff teams.
Yet for some reason, we all ignored the fact that Alabama hasn’t had a difference-maker at wide receiver since 2021. Alabama has had an average offensive line over the past 2 seasons — giving up 63 sacks and a whopping 167 tackles for loss — and hasn’t had an impact running back since Najee Harris in 2020.
This season might be the all-time low under Saban on the offensive line. If you really want to point to 1 area of decline, nothing is more drastic than the unit that once churned out 1st-round NFL Draft picks.
How many times did center Seth McLaughlin roll a shotgun snap to Milroe, ruining any timing and/or rhythm for the offense and ending any hope for a clean operation? How many times did offensive tackles JC Latham and Kadyn Proctor — both elite 5-star recruits — whiff in pass protection, forcing Milroe to escape and work off-schedule time and again?
Alabama had 107 yards rushing on 35 carries, a measly 3.1 yards per carry. Milroe threw for 255 yards, but had 2 interceptions — including a critical pick-6 in the 4th quarter.
A 21-game home winning streak is gone. A 57-game nonconference winning streak is gone.
More damaging: The aura of Alabama as the bully on the block is gone. Nothing was more humbling, more resolute, than the last drive of the game.
Alabama needed the ball, needed points for 1 of those patented comebacks we’ve seen so many times over nearly 2 decades under Saban. Of course it was going to happen.
Until it didn’t.
Until Texas took the ball at its 30 with 7:14 to play — more than enough time for Alabama to get a stop, score and get the ball back like we’ve seen before — and didn’t give it back. It was pure Texas will, imposed over 12 plays and 34 yards and the entire 7 minutes and 14 seconds.
Bryce Young isn’t around to save the Tide anymore. Pete Golding isn’t around to blame anymore.
It was just Texas in their own little corner of Bryant-Denny Stadium — after giving Sbaan his first double-digit home loss since a guy named Zooker planted a 12-point loss on him in 2003 — singing The Eyes of Texas and leaving no doubt.
Alabama is in decline.
It couldn’t be more obvious now.