3 reasons to be ecstatic, 3 reasons to take caution as Alabama hits 2nd bye week
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When Alabama had its first bye week of the season in Week 4, it sat at 2-1, with a trip to Georgia looming, SEC land mines galore waiting after that and questions galore about how it would deal with the 5-week gauntlet.
The Crimson Tide were still shaking off the effects of that Week 1 whiff at Florida State, a stain that victories over lightweights like Louisiana-Monroe and Wisconsin weren’t going to remove. That September bye was perfectly timed, as it turned out. It didn’t guarantee any victories on the other side of it as Bama began its long and arduous SEC journey. The jury was still out on this Alabama team and its head coach at that pivotal point.
But it gave Kalen DeBoer some time to take stock of everything, and it gave his team time to get healthy and reload mentally. Who knew during that week of early season reflection and recovery what the following month was going to look like or what the Tide’s record was going to look like by the time the next bye week beckoned in early November. As it jumped into the deep end after the bye on Sept. 27 in Athens, Alabama had everything to prove, and a nervous fan base held its collective breath.
Five weeks later and 5 SEC wins later, including 4 straight over ranked teams, look at the 2025 Crimson Tide now as they make a soft landing on that 2nd bye with a 7-1 record and a No. 4 ranking. There’s a College Football Playoff berth in plain sight, but while there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic, there’s also plenty of work still to be done. A tricky November finishing grind awaits.Â
Knowing this, here are 3 reasons to be ecstatic and 3 reasons to take caution during Bama’s well-earned 2nd bye:
3 reasons to be ecstatic
We’ll start with the positives for the surging Tide:
1. Alabama is showing all the signs of being a special team
Those 4 victories in 4 weeks over ranked teams were pretty special in itself, but it was last week’s dramatic win over unranked South Carolina that showed the country how special this Alabama team can be. There was every human nature inkling that the Crimson Tide could suffer a major letdown in Columbia after those 4 ranked wins in a row, and that’s exactly what happened as Bama started slowly at a rocking Williams-Brice Stadium and trailed 22-14 late in the 4th quarter.
All that goodwill the Tide had built during the previous 4 weeks was in peril against a sneaky South Carolina team that was 1-4 in the SEC after being ranked as highly as 10th in early September. Alabama was being shut out in the 2nd half in front of a national TV audience on ABC. This was truly a season’s crossroad, because a loss in this spot would’ve driven a huge dagger into those Playoff dreams that had been growing by the week.
There were exactly 10 minutes left for Bama to do something about it and boy did Bama do something about it. It made the ultimate statement with a 14-play, 79-yard touchdown drive, but it also took 7:44 off the clock, and with 2:16 left the Tide still needed the 2-point conversion to even tie it. They got that, too, of course, with Ty Simpson making every clutch play that was needed. Then Deontae Lawson made perhaps the biggest play of Bama’s season, stripping LaNorris Sellers on a short run and setting the Tide up at the South Carolina 38-yard line.
They only needed a field goal at that point, but they got more, courtesy of — who else? — Germie Bernard, whose tightrope walk of a 25-yard touchdown run down the right sideline on 3rd-and-10 with 34 seconds left finished off a whirlwind of huge plays that turned crushing defeat into glorious victory. It was a stunning finishing flurry by a team that’s become insanely clutch since the Georgia win. It was the kind of win reserved for teams primed to do something special in December and January.
2. Ty Simpson seems to know when winning time arrives
Sure, his stat line looks great in late October, especially for a first-year starter. Simpson has been as steady as ever since the Florida State fiasco in Week 1, piling up 2,184 yards passing so far in 2025 with 20 touchdown passes and just 1 interception. His completion percentage is a hair below 68 and his season QBR sits at 81.9 with 4 games left in the regular season.
All of those glossy stats, together with those 4 ranked SEC wins in 4 weeks, have made Simpson one of the leading Heisman Trophy candidates. But what also separates Simpson from almost any other quarterback in the country is that he knows when a play has to be made, and he doesn’t get flustered. Simpson has a knack for slowing things down, like just last Saturday, when he took the huddle with a little less than 10 minutes left and Alabama down 22-14 at a hostile Williams-Brice Stadium that was all ready for field-storming and goalpost removing.
Simpson prevented all that revelry, of course, coolly converting a 3rd-and-7 with a 13-yard pass and a 3rd-and-4 with a 5-yard pass early in the do-or-die drive to keep it alive and Bama, too. The Tide survived mainly because Simpson never lost control of the wheel. His ability to stay calm, assess the brutally tough situation and conquer it is what should excite the program and its fan base, with many more crucial situations sure to come in November and beyond.
3. Bama is doing all this without a superhuman Ryan Williams
Yes, Williams had a solid day last week in that dramatic win at South Carolina, catching 7 passes for 72 yards. But once again he didn’t find the end zone, and all of the biggest plays were made by tight end Josh Cuevas and fellow wideout Germie Bernard, who is leading the Tide in receiving this late in the season — not Williams. The young man who was a 17-year-old freshman phenom in 2024 has never quite gotten rolling as a sophomore in 2025, whether it was that concussion in Week 1 or those bevy of dropped passes since, and yet Alabama has still continued to win SEC games.
That 165-yard, 2-touchdown breakout against Wisconsin is still Williams’ only 100-yard game this season, and that was way back in Week 3, and he only caught 1 touchdown in Alabama’s 5 SEC victories. While those 7 catches last Saturday were a season-high, creating room for optimism, just 2 weeks earlier in the win at Mizzou he didn’t catch a single pass and was unofficially targeted just once the entire game. That 1 TD in SEC play came on Oct. 4 against Vanderbilt, so that’s 3 straight games now without a touchdown for a player who had 8 TD catches and 2 scoring runs last fall.
We’re two-thirds into the regular season, and how many people would’ve had Bama ranked 4th and sitting tied atop the SEC with Williams having just 33 catches for 495 yards and 3 touchdowns? You’ve just got to believe Williams will bust out somewhere down the stretch, and that thought should thrill Tide fans while scaring the heck out of everybody else.
3 reasons to take caution
There are still roadblocks ahead as Bama hits the stretch run:
1. LSU and Oklahoma loom, and so does a trip to Auburn
A lot of the heavy lifting in the SEC is done, but a lot still remains after the bye. There is the annual early November matchup with LSU, and Bama would be wise to pay no attention to the Tigers’ 2-3 SEC record or their recent firing of Brian Kelly. It’ll still be bitter rival LSU showing up in Tuscaloosa on Nov. 8, and it’ll be in primetime on ABC. It’ll also be the Tigers’ first game since Kelly’s firing, so they’ll be sky-high and have nothing to lose with the sole intention of ruining Bama’s Playoff hopes.
If that isn’t enough, the following week brings current 18th-ranked Oklahoma to Bryant-Denny Stadium. It’ll be a revenge game, with the Sooners having ruined the Tide’s Playoff hopes around the same time last year after an embarrassing 24-3 loss in Norman. That OU team didn’t even have John Mateer at quarterback, so the challenge, the motivation and the stakes will all be colliding.
And it’s an odd-numbered year, so waiting on Thanksgiving weekend is a trip to the Plains to face an Auburn team that always relishes the chance to ruin Bama’s postseason plans. Remember 2 years ago, when the Tide needed the Jalen Milroe Miracle to outlast a 6-5 Tigers team at Jordan-Hare Stadium? So, there are 3 roadblocks to conquer before Bama can even start thinking about Atlanta.
2. As great as things are, Bama still carries around that 1 loss
This one relates to those 3 remaining SEC challenges discussed above. That head-scratching loss at FSU way back in late August really did happen, and despite all the good feelings, SEC wins and Heisman bluster for Ty Simpson that’s followed, it still counts.
That means even 1 stumble in these remaining SEC games tosses Bama into the likely huge pot of strong 2-loss teams with similar Playoff aspirations.
If there’s a 2nd loss (and a first SEC loss), there’s also the tricky tiebreakers that could keep the Tide out of the SEC title game, which would be a chance for another loss. All of this is a reality check that there’s still little to no margin for error for Alabama.
3. Those running game issues still haven’t been fixed
When the Tide take the field on the 2nd Saturday of November, their leading rusher will have just 308 yards. That’s Jam Miller, who missed the season’s first 3 games with a dislocated collarbone suffered in fall camp. It’s a minor miracle that Bama has come this far at 7-1 overall, 5-0 in the SEC and No. 4 in the country with next to no running game.
That begs this question: Can the Crimson Tide really win a national title or even an SEC title without a real running game to go with Ty Simpson’s exploits? Logic says that answer is no, which means at some point we’re going to have to see more than a flash of the old Miller.
He’s only averaging a measly 3.8 yards per carry, so even eclipsing that 300-yard mark has been a grind. It’s taken Miller 80 carries to get where he is, and after showing signs of life against Vanderbilt and Mizzou, he combined for just 41 yards on 22 carries against Tennessee and South Carolina. Alabama was able to survive that minimal production and still win, but how much longer can that continue and how far can the Tide really go if this trend does continue?
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
