Alabama will sit out the final Saturday of October, free to hand out Halloween candy and watch the SEC continue to slug it out with each other as full-on parity fills the conference narrative in 2026.
This month’s gauntlet was guaranteed to be difficult, and it bit Bama, a few times actually, as the Crimson Tide suffered back-to-back losses to Georgia and Tennessee. The former setback was encouraging, the latter one severely disappointing, but they count the same and they’ve left Alabama with pretty much no margin for error to make the College Football Playoff as it enters the November stretch run.
Yes, last season the Tide somehow made the Playoff with 3 losses, including a blowout defeat against Georgia in the SEC title game. But the odds of that exact scenario repeating itself are slim to none, so Bama should expect to operate on a zero-tolerance policy for the rest of the season, as in no more losses or else no Playoff.
With that presumed reality in mind, there are plenty of obstacles to the Tide making it back to the Playoff in December. Here are 3 potentially menacing Playoff obstacles waiting for Alabama as some much-needed rest precedes the rest of its regular-season grind:
1. The right arm and shifty legs of Sam Leavitt
By far Bama’s biggest challenge, and maybe its only challenge during what’s on paper a softer November schedule, will come immediately after the bye when the Tide invade Death Valley to face LSU. So, yes, Lane Kiffin surely stands in Alabama’s way of making it back to the Playoff, but even more so it’s Leavitt, who’s been lethal in his past 2 games against Mississippi State and Auburn.
Leavitt fired 4 touchdown passes in a blowout of the Bulldogs in Week 7, then tossed 3 more scoring strikes last Saturday to help LSU roll to victory on the Plains. He threw for 289 yards against Mississippi State and 387 more against Auburn, with insane completion percentages of 81.6 and 71.1, respectively, and Leavitt even showed off his wheels against Auburn with 8 carries for 54 yards and another TD.
That’s all great, but the best thing about Leavitt’s past couple games might be what he didn’t do. He didn’t throw an interception in either contest, staying away from the bugaboo that became an annoying constant in Leavitt’s first 6 games as a Tiger. Leavitt tossed 8 interceptions in those first 6 games, but perhaps he’s finally getting comfortable in Kiffin’s system and just in time to unleash on Alabama on Nov. 7 (3:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
If Leavitt can leave those interceptions behind again in Week 10 against a Tide defense that has feasted on picking off the opposing quarterback, then Bama could be in trouble. The Arizona State transfer has already thrown for 2,173 yards, with 4 regular-season games still to go, and his 85.9 QBR ranks 5th in college football, so this is a supreme talent who’ll be trying to hand Alabama a crushing 3rd loss.
Leavitt can beat you with those legs, too, as Auburn found out last Saturday, and he’s rushed for 324 yards and 8 touchdowns so far this year, averaging 4.5 yards per carry. Kane Wommack will have had 2 weeks to prepare his defense for Leavitt, so that’s a big advantage, but guess what? LSU has a bye this week, too, so Kiffin has 2 weeks to coach Leavitt up for the Week 10 showdown and Leavitt should be fresh without the bruises of playing the previous week.
This is a quarterback who appears to be playing his best football of the season right now, and that momentum isn’t likely to be ruined by a bye week. There will be numerous challenges for Bama in trying to win at LSU, but Leavitt is the head of the snake, and he’s rolling right now. If the Tide can’t slow that roll and take a third defeat because of it, good luck trying to squeeze into the Playoff again with 3 losses.
2. The risk of being boxed out amid the SEC’s fierce parity
The grind that is the SEC has been turned up a few notches this season, whether it’s because of the 9-game conference schedule or not. You know there’s massive parity in the SEC with one glance at the league standings. By the close of play in Week 8, there were no undefeated teams in SEC play and all but 2 of the 16 teams had at least 2 conference losses.
Only Georgia and Kentucky made it to Week 9 with only 1 SEC loss, which is pretty remarkable, and Alabama is one of those 2-loss teams trying to work itself out of that logjam. If this was 2027, when the Playoff is expected to include 24 teams, then Bama’s postseason plight would likely look a little different.
But it’s 2026, the Playoff is still just 12 teams, and there’s going to be a numbers game at work on Selection Sunday because there can only be so many teams chosen from the SEC. With Alabama already being weighed down by those 2 losses and with so many other 2-loss SEC teams still firmly in the Playoff mix, the Tide’s margin for error is razor thin the rest of the way, and one could easily argue Bama has zero margin for error.
Unbelievable depth in the SEC and the parity that goes with it is nice to brag about, until you realize that parity is going to be really hard to overcome over the long haul in the pursuit of a Playoff berth. That parity is probably going to leave a few SEC teams out of the Playoff who in most years would have made it in.
Alabama could be one of those casualties, as one hard look at the current SEC standings tells you.
3. The continued disappearance of that revived running game
This Alabama team was supposed to be different from last year’s run-challenged offense because it had better talent in the backfield and was better in the trenches. Bama had a running game again, until it didn’t. Even in beating Texas A&M in Week 8, the Tide only rushed for 68 yards while averaging 2.4 yards per carry.
Perhaps some of the struggles were due to the absence of injured freshman phenom EJ Crowell. Nobody cracked double figures in carries against the Aggies, so there was no commitment to anyone. Crowell only managed one carry the week before when he was injured during the ugly loss at Tennessee, when Alabama rushed for only 54 yards while averaging an even worse 2.1 yards per carry.
Those 161 yards rushing against Georgia, when the Tide averaged 5.6 yards per carry even in defeat, are a distant memory. Maybe the bye will be just what Bama needs, as Ryan Grubb has ample time for a running game reset, and perhaps the bye will give Crowell time to get healthy along with center Racin Delgatty, who also missed the Texas A&M game.
It’s hard to imagine the Tide winning at Death Valley with the feeble running game they’ve featured recently. The rushing attack that returned to life in September and into October must reappear in November, and the sudden drift toward being one-dimensional like last year must disappear quickly.
If it doesn’t, it’ll likely be a Selection Sunday full of sorrow in Tuscaloosa.
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.
