Alabama found themselves down in a football game for a change, and they decidedly didn’t care much for the feeling.
After TAMU wide receiver Christian Kirk hauled in a Trevor Knight pass to make it 14-13, Aggies, the Crimson Tide went on a 20-point roll that’d not only (obviously) save their season, but one that puts them over the final hurdle in the driver’s seat to winning the SEC West.
Final score: 33-14.
The Aggies were game for a decent amount of time, but just didn’t have enough once the Tide turned on the spicket and decided to over-saturate the garden. For a moment, it looked like the impossible was on the table … Alabama losing, especially as Jalen Hurts had his most pedestrian outing of his young career through the air.
Hurts’ 3-yard pass to Calvin Ridley on the subsequent drive after the Tide had fallen behind put them up for good, and at that point, unbeknownst to the Aggies and coach Kevin Sumlin, it was only a matter of the final score.
Jonathan Allen’s fumble return from 30 yards out made it a two-score game, and the only thing that’d change that from there on out would be a 37-yard scamper from Hurts to ice the game up. Hurts ran for 93 yards at 4.4 per clip. Clearly, TAMU’s blueprint was trying to shut down his normal production and see if the offense could move without it.
But you can’t give up scores on offense, and when you’re up, you need to get a stop to make the opponent think that maybe, just maybe, a loss can happen.
As it stands, TAMU shouldn’t be discouraged by the effort. They played well and showed themselves as a top 15 team that just happens to exist in the same realm as Alabama, which is a top 1 team and seems to be unwilling to give that up.
The Tide have probably eclipsed their toughest road test (Ole Miss, Tennessee), their toughest home test (Texas A&M), and their toughest neutral site test (USC) until the SEC title game. As things are shaping up, this is the Tide’s division to lose, and if they’re going to lose anything, LSU and Auburn will be the best shots and need to be playing out of their mind.
The Tide won a game where their offense wasn’t amazing, and they got dragged into the mud of a close game. It was good for the Tide to do so. But for the rest of the nation and especially the SEC, it’s more harrowing proof that there’s no situation the defending champs cannot handle.
