Tennessee put up a fight for a while at Alabama on Saturday night, but in the end the Crimson Tide pulled away for a 52-24 victory, outscoring the Volunteers 28-7 in the 4th quarter.

As has been the case most of the year for Alabama, quarterback Bryce Young was a key factor in the outcome.

The 6-foot, 194-pound sophomore completed 31-of-43 passes for 371 and 2 touchdowns in the victory, and he impressed head coach Nick Saban with his play.

“Bryce really played well in the game,” said Saban in his postgame press conference. “I think he got frustrated a couple times. But he was very consistent. He made some big plays; we made some big plays. We missed a couple other big plays that we could have made.

“But I thought his consistency in performance was really, really good, and I thought the way he controlled the game, especially on 3rd down – we struggled to run the ball early, which kind of put us in some third and not great, manageable situations and we converted on those. And that was really important early in the game, especially in the first drive.”

Young also showed off another facet of his game Saturday night, as he was more active running the ball than he had been all season.

Through the first 7 games, Young had a grand total of 28 carries for minus-20 yards, with the majority of those numbers coming as a result of sacks.

But against the Volunteers, Young carried the ball 10 times for 42 yards and 2 TDs.

Saban, however, said the plan isn’t to have Young run the ball more in the coming weeks.

“We would like for him not to have to run, and I think he’s really selective,” Saban added. “We don’t really have any quarterback runs that he actually runs. But he’s done a really good job of scrambling. He’s really deceptively quick and has a really good burst and moves around very effectively in the pocket, so he’s not easy to sack. So that’s been very beneficial to us.

“I would actually hope that he doesn’t have to do it, that we could protect well enough and get people open well enough that we can throw and catch it and he wouldn’t have to do that. But I think that any time a quarterback does that, it does affect the defense, and I think it’s something that’s been very effective for us the last couple games.”

Alabama is now 7-1 overall and 4-1 in SEC play on the season.

The Crimson Tide will be off next weekend before retuning to action on November 6 at home against LSU.