On Saturday, Ole Miss will try to do something that has yet to occur while Nick Saban has been at the helm at Alabama: Beat Alabama three consecutive times. In fact, Ole Miss became only the second team to beat Alabama back-to-back with Saban as head coach.
“It’s not something I use as a motivating factor,” Saban said at his press conference on Monday when asked about the revenge element of Saturday’s game. “To say that it’s not a factor — I’m not sure I’m a psychiatrist enough to know the answer to that question. I think what I would rather focus on with our players is not the emotion of the game. There will be plenty of emotion for the game I think — being an SEC game, being a division game, being a team that we’ve struggled against the last couple of years.”
Last season, Alabama turned the ball over five times, while Ole Miss had zero turnovers. The turnover differential was a factor in Alabama’s 43-37 loss at home.
Interestingly, the only other time Alabama lost back-to-back, the failed shot at revenge also came at home. Alabama lost to LSU 9-6 in overtime at Bryant-Denny Stadium in 2011. Alabama still received plenty of revenge that year as the 2011 team thumped LSU 21-0 in the BCS National Championship Game.
The last time Ole Miss and Alabama met at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, Ole Miss won 23-17. Blake Sims’ last chance to lead a comeback resulted in an interception on a pass intended for tight end O.J. Howard.
“Everything that we mess up, it’s not really what the other team did,” Saban said. “It’s more what we didn’t do. So more focus on execution, the process of what we need to do to get it right. I think that will be very, very important. Emotion doesn’t last in the game. Character, want-to, commitment to what you’re doing, playing for 60 minutes in the game one play at a time regardless of what happened in the last game is the mindset that you want.”
In 11 games against opponents that defeated the team in the previous year, Alabama is 9-2 under Saban. If we get technical and count the 2012 LSU victory as a revenge game (even though the 2011 national title game was a truer form of revenge), Alabama is 5-0 in road revenge games. Meanwhile, Alabama is 3-2 in home revenge games following last season’s loss. Given the fact that Saban has yet to lose to an opponent three times in a row while at Alabama, history does not look good for Ole Miss.
It was worth revisiting this angle, which was outlined by Talal Elmasry’s story on the subject last year (minus the 2015 result).
ALABAMA PAYBACK GAMES UNDER SABAN
Lost 2007 vs. Georgia
Next game: No. 8 Alabama def. No. 3 Georgia, 41-30 in 2008
Lost 2007 vs. LSU
Next game: No. 1 Alabama def. No. 15 LSU, 27-21 in OT in 2008
Lost 2007 at Mississippi State
Next game: No. 1 Alabama def. Mississippi State, 32-7 in 2008
Lost 2007 at Auburn
Next game: No. 1 Alabama def. Auburn, 36-0 in 2008
Lost 2008 vs. Florida (N)
Next game: No. 2 Alabama def. No. 1 Florida, 32-13 (SEC Championship) in 2009
Lost 2010 at LSU
Next game: No. 2 Alabama lost to No. 1 LSU 9-6 in OT in 2011
Lost 2010 vs. Auburn
Next game: No. 2 Alabama def. Auburn 42-14 in 2011
Lost 2011 vs. LSU (N)
Next game: No. 2 Alabama def. No.1 LSU 21-0 in 2011 (BCS National Championship)
Lost 2012 vs. Texas A&M
Next game: No. 1 Alabama def. No. 6 Texas A&M, 49-42 in 2013
Lost 2013 at Auburn
Next game: No. 2 Alabama def. No. 15 Auburn, 55-44 in 2014
Lost 2014 at Ole Miss
Next game: No. 2 Alabama lost to No. 15 Ole Miss 43-37 in 2015
Lost 2015 vs. Ole Miss
Next game: No. 1 Alabama at No. 19 Ole Miss, Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET
