News Article: Tennessee wrap-up: Alabama finally finishes big

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Tennessee wrap-up: Alabama finally finishes big
By Jess Nicholas
TideFans.com Editor-in-Chief
Oct. 25, 2008

There are wins, and there are physical wins. Then there are physical beatdowns.

Get in your car, drive past the beatdown, get on the interstate, go about 200 miles down the road, pull off the road and you’ll find what Alabama did to Tennessee Saturday night.

If there was ever a case of two programs going in more opposite directions, it’s a good bet no one has ever seen it. Alabama is rocketing upwards. Tennessee can’t squander its resources fast enough.

Vol wideout Josh Briscoe summed up Tennessee’s problem perfectly, laughing on the sideline after a boneheaded play on his part robbed his team of a first down. Briscoe didn’t care, even after quarterback Nick Stephens came over to yell at him. If anything, he seemed to laugh more.

Tennessee as a whole doesn’t seem to care. This is Alabama 2000, Auburn 1998, or any number of LSU teams prior to Nick Saban’s arrival in Baton Rouge many years ago. As a result, Tennessee’s players are going to get their coach fired. It would take some kind of miracle, or an economic disruption greater than the Great Depression to convince Tennessee brass that they shouldn’t buy out Phil Fulmer and throw big bucks at another coach – any other coach.

There isn’t much to say about how Alabama beat Tennessee. Alabama simply did it four and five yards at the time. When Alabama wanted to run, it ran. When Alabama wanted to pass, it passed. When Julio Jones falls asleep tonight and pulls his blanket up to his chin, it will be the first time Saturday that he was covered.

Glen Coffee and – a surprise of sorts – Roy Upchurch kept the Alabama rushing game clicking while John Parker Wilson displayed a quiet calm foreign to his first two years on the job. Upchurch played an amazing game overall.

Defensively, Alabama showed it was more than just Terrence Cody. The end result: 365 to 172 in the total yardage department, 7.8 yards versus 4.8 yards per pass attempt, 4.1 yards versus 1.9 yards per rushing attempt. Aside from a Javier Arenas fumble in the punt return game that allowed Tennessee to win the turnover battle 1-0, there wasn’t a single area of the game that Tennessee got even a push.

Coaching? Phil Fulmer gambled once – attempting a 51-yard field goal that was clearly out of Daniel Lincoln’s range, if his career up to this point is any indication – and Alabama made him pay, scoring on its next possession.

Alabama also got an edge in penalties and key officiating calls. Three bad (or at least questionable) calls stood out: Mark Ingram’s fumble, the offensive pass interference penalty on Tennessee’s Lucas Taylor and the defensive pass interference penalty on Rashad Johnson. Alabama came out with a 2-1 edge in those calls, but the big difference was that Johnson’s flag had no effect on the outcome. On the Ingram play, one angle showed the ball out while another showed the call may have been correct, but replay officials at that point did the right thing by not compounding a bad call (the runner being down) with another (making a replay call based on inconclusive evidence).

Alabama has been in the position before that Tennessee was in Saturday night: needing every call and every bounce to go its way to win. Saturday, Alabama found that luck follows the good. And make no mistake about it, Alabama is good.

Also make no mistake that Tennessee is bad, and that it is squandering an incredible amount of talent in the process. If Nick Saban could work with Tennessee’s defense for about six months, he’d have as good a defense as the one he already fields. Offensively, it’s hard to imagine that quarterback troubles could so outweigh good talent at receiver, running back and along the offensive line, but apparently, it does.

Alabama gets a break of sorts next week as it faces the Sun Belt’s Arkansas State before finishing with talented LSU, physical Mississippi State and rival Auburn. But it would be nice to see Alabama “finish” – in Nick Saban terms – two games in a row.

Saban was clearly happy with Alabama’s effort in his postgame comments. It was good to hear the coach happy, as Alabama has done so much to make him unhappy in the last couple of weeks.

His team can say “you’re welcome” by staying the course. It’s truly time to believe in the possibilities of a championship.