(This post is gonna get me in a whole heap of trouble - so remember that you're reading an exchange between factual statement opposing viewpoints, not - at this point - an overall assessment).
1992 Alabama
THE CASE FOR
Alabama's 1992 defense is among the best - if not the best - in college football history. With eight NFL draft picks (Copeland, Curry, Langham, Teague, London, Oden, Nunley, Lemanski Hall) who played at least 3 seasons in the NFL, this defense has to rank with the greatest to ever play the game.
Oh yeah, they even beat Miami without linebacker Michael Rogers, who got hurt in a car wreck. The Tide never missed a beat.
Alabama's defensive numbers are impressive, the first college team to finish the regular season leading in all defensive categories since the 1986 Oklahoma Sooners of Brian Bosworth. The defense threw three shutouts, but we're just beginning. For the entire season, the Tide D gave up 122 points on 13 touchdowns and 7 field goals, but even those numbers don't show the incredible domination. Thirteen touchdowns - in 13 games - is literally one touchdown a game. But even those stats are uneven. One TD was a punt return by Miami while another was a pick six by Southern Mississippi. While those numbers may go against the defensive stats count, those were touchdowns that the DEFENSE didn't exactly surrender. That knocks us down to 11 TDs - and we can cut the numbers further. Arkansas got a touchdown and a two with just 62 seconds remaining - against the third-string. The Hawgs got 82 yards on that drive - they got 112 the rest of the game. South Carolina did pretty much the same thing, scoring a TD against the third-string while trailing, 41-0, in the fourth quarter. Two more points came because of a safety in the LSU game - again, a play where the defense wasn't even on the field. LSU's touchdown actually came when they got the ball at the Tide 3 after a blocked punt.
Even then, it took them three plays to go nine feet.
One of MSU's two touchdowns came thanks to a Tide turnover at their own 11.
What I'm saying is that if you make all things equal and what the FIRST-STRING defense did without the offense putting them in a whole - that defense only surrendered seven touchdowns all year long. But even that modification doesn't tell the story.
No, the real story is the fact that that defense forced forty-one - let me say that again - FORTY-ONE turnovers. SIX opponents - including Miami - had at least four turnovers against this defense. And another turnover - George Teague's strip of Lamar Thomas in the most iconic play of that season - was invalidated by a penalty. The only team that beat the Tide on turnovers was Southern Miss, and Alabama turned in SEVEN non-offensive touchdowns for the season (a fake punt, a blocked punt, a punt return, and four pick sixes). Seven opponents were held below 200 yards of total offense and two more (Vandy and Ole Miss) had 210 and 211, respectively. In other words, NINE opponents were held under 212 yards of total offense. One team - USM - had only 54 total yards and 3 first downs, one of which came on a penalty.
To give you a recent point of comparison, the 2016 Alabama defense that had all those NOTs had THREE EXTRA GAMES and forced TWELVE FEWER turnovers. Those are numbers that are almost impossible to imagine, especially when you remember that turnovers should be easier to come by as the passing game has replaced the running game in CFB.
And it's not as though this defense was playing the bottom of the barrel. Miami's 9th-ranked offense was cranking out almost 33 ppg, and Alabama held them to nearly 3 TDs below that. Tennessee averaged 28.1 ppg and got all of ten and 194 yards on this defense.
Now - I'll concede that the offense was NOT an all-world beating juggernaut. But just look at the numbers when it counted. Miami held opponents to 11.5 ppg - and the Tide TRIPLED that number. Okay, so Teague had a pick six, and the offense gets 27 - that's still nearly 2 1/2 times, and I'm not even counting the four points the refs cost Lassic on the spun ball at the goal line. Tennessee averaged giving up 15.7 ppg, but the Alabama offense topped it. Ole Miss, 15.8, and Alabama's so-called "pedestrian" offense doubled it. MSU gave up 16 ppg, and Alabama damn near doubled that as well (30). Arkansas averaged giving up 19 ppg - so Alabama simply punched in 38 - and the backups were playing the fourth quarter. South Carolina gave up 22 ppg, and the Tide more than doubled that as well. Alabama also exceeded the average ppg allowed by LSU (23.7, scored 31), Tulane (31.7, scored 37).
And then you have to remember something else - Alabama's offensive numbers are effectively lowered because their best offensive player (David Palmer) missed almost 1/4 of the season due to suspensions. No, it's nobody else's fault he was suspended, but you also have to admit that not having him available will reduce the offensive output.
And finally, this was a team with an unusually high number of distractions. In September, John Stevenson's brother died right before the Southern Miss game. Rogers's accident has already been mentioned. And on top of this came two other bombshells that affected the Tide season: 1) Gene Jelks alleging (on the Thursday before the MSU game) that he had been paid while playing at Alabama; and 2) Pat Dye's resignation hitting the airwaves less than 48 hours before the Iron Bowl. The seniors on the team had all played with Jelks and knew him. You think that didn't affect their mindset combined with going on the road to Cowbell Hell against a good Bulldogs team just as the Tide had reached #2 in the nation? You think Auburn trying to win one last game for Pat Dye didn't improve their performance for that one last time, players recruited by a guy who was the closest thing Auburn had to a legend (not named Bo Jackson)?
College football is an emotional game, and things that would not be distractions for grown NFL players can sideline college aspirations.
Of course, there are two more objections that both border on silly that go like this:
1) Alabama didn't play Florida State, who pundits agree was the best team at the end of the year
2) Alabama didn't play Georgia, by far the best offense in the SEC
What never gets mentioned is that the reason Alabama didn't play these teams is because they lost to OTHER, LESSER teams!!!
Let's start with Florida State. The argument goes like this: Florida State, unlike Miami, had a running game that would have negated Alabama putting eleven men on the line, where Charlie Ward's speed would have enabled him to offset any blitzes. The Noles were unlucky against Miami, and they were playing the best ball of the year as 1992 ended.
Well, it's not Alabama's fault that Florida State not only couldn't beat Miami but couldn't even score AN OFFENSIVE TOUCHDOWN against Miami. Florida State's 38.1 ppg offense got one touchdown against the Canes - Tamarick Vanover returned opening kickoff for the only touchdown the Noles could get against the same Miami defense that gave up 34 (er, 27) points to Alabama's offense. The other 59:15 saw the Noles get nine points on three field goals.
Why anyone thinks FSU would have scored more than 16 points on Alabama's better defense is hard to understand.
Georgia? Well, UGA DID have the best offense in the SEC. Alabama - so goes the story - had a pedestrian offense.
Alabama and Georgia had SEVEN common opponents in 1992.
The pedestrian offense scored more points against the same foe than the great one did three times.
Georgia scored more points against Florida and Tennessee than Alabama did - but Alabama won both games and Georgia lost both.
Alabama's 1992 team may not have been the best all-around or most balanced team of the 1990s, but they were without question the best defense of the decade and perhaps the greatest of all-time.
THE CASE AGAINST
I'm going to get this out of the way so there's no misunderstanding: Alabama's 1992 defense was a VERY good defense, but it wasn't even the best defense of the early 90s much less the best of all-time. Washington's 1991 defense gave up fewer ppg while playing MUCH better offenses (The Huskies played THREE of the top five offenses in CFB; Alabama played TWO of the top 50).
College football fans are susceptible to the defining moment visual, the so-called "Heisman moment" concept. Without that singular encapsulation of a year, teams are less remembered than those that produce iconic moments. 1995 Nebraska is considered an all-time great team and when you ask anyone to name a play from that year, anyone who is not a Big Red fan is going to name the same moment: Tommie Frazier breaking 147 tackles while dodging Bosnian sniper fire in the moment that killed the Florida Gators. Without that moment, it is debatable whether or not Nebraska would be remembered as easily as they are. And Alabama has this covered with George Teague's strip of Lamar Thomas, a play that - if you want to get technical about it - never actually happened.
Let's face it: Alabama was an underdog to a Miami team living off reputation of past glories. Miami was not as good as advertised so Alabama got a double bang for the victory - to say nothing of the fact that 99% of the nation was no doubt rooting for the Tide not out of devotion but out of derision towards Miami's bad reputation. So what happens? Media overrates Miami, Alabama trashes Miami, Alabama defense enters the pantheon of all-time legendary defenses.
You'd think an all-time great defense would have a ton of "best defensive performance" against most of the teams they played, but Alabama doesn't. Not in 1992.
They held Vandy to eight points - Auburn held them to 7 and Wake Forest to 6. Nobody considers those defenses all-time greats.
Southern Miss got 10 against the Tide - but only 8 against Auburn. (Anyone noticing a trend here?)
Arkansas got 11....FIVE OTHER TEAMS held the Hawgs to single digits
South Carolina got 7 - Georgia held them to 6.
Ole Miss got 10 on Alabama's all-time great D......but only 9 against Vandy
LSU got 11 against Alabama.......but two other teams shut them out and another (Arkansas) gave up only 6
Mississippi St got 21 against Alabama.....SIX other teams held the Bulldogs to fewer points than this "great" Alabama D did. SIX!!
Florida got 21 on the Tide.....three other opponents held Florida below what Alabama surrendered
Arizona held Miami to fewer points than Alabama did and two other teams (Syracuse and Penn St) held them to 17 or fewer
Only four foes were held to their season low - the three shutout victims and Tennessee. And since we're hearing about all the distractions for Alabama, I'll remind you that Tennessee's coach, Johnny Majors, had just returned and was dealing with a bunch of shenanigans of his own or maybe the Tide doesn't hold the Vols to ten.
By contrast, the 2011 Tide not only had the same number of shutouts (3), they held Arkansas and LSU (twice) to their lowest point totals of the year, and if you grant the defense actually had a shutout on Auburn, you have SEVEN opponents at their lowest total for the year. THAT'S an all-time defense, the 1992 one is not.
The 1992 defense, as great as it was, was hardly elite. Teams with either a dual threat QB (Robinson and Plump at MSU and Shane Mathews/Errict Rhett at Florida) gave the Tide defense problems. How many Tide fans know that Miami had more yards of total offense in the 1993 Sugar Bowl than Alabama did? If Teague merely tackles Thomas rather than strip the ball, Miami would have topped 400 yards in that game. Have you bothered to look at the scoring offense stats for the Tide's 1992 opponents? Remember there were only 107 I-A schools back then:
86 - La Tech
93 - Arkansas
98 - South Carolina
99 - Tulane
Again, the contrast with 1991 Washington is obvious.
What about "total offense," surely an objection to be raised?
73 - Vandy (325)
78 - Auburn (317)
84 - Ole Miss (300)
85 - LSU (300)
90 - SCAR (289)
93 - USM (284)
98 - Tulane (268)
105 (out of 107) - Arkansas (243 ypg)
Alabama's defense simply ran up impressive numbers against bad offenses, which had the net effect of making them look better than they actually were.
Much is made of the turnover totals, an admittedly impressive number. But the eight opponents listed above (out of 13 mind you) contributed 29 of those turnovers, an average of 3.5 per game. The other five opponents gave up 12, an average of 2.4 per game. And those turnovers also skewed the Alabama offensive stats into looking even better than they really are.
Alabama's 27.7 ppg is the second-worst scoring offense of the entire decade of the 1990s. Only Michigan's 27.4 is lower. Alabama is a full 3 ppg below Georgia Tech, hardly an offensive juggernaut, and these numbers as stated above are skewed because of the defense.
Forty-one turnovers - four of them returned for touchdowns - means Alabama (in theory anyway) got the ball 37 other times in better than expected field position.
Anyone know how many TD drives of more than 68 yards that Alabama had in 1992? Seven. This offense didn't drive the ball hardly at all, they merely picked up a short field after a forced turnover.
Alabama played in the run-oriented SEC of 1992, old school football. Most of their opponents had one-dimensional running attacks, the standard offense of the time. Multi-faceted attacks - as Florida State had but Alabama was fortunate enough to not face - gave the Tide problems rather than preparing for one specific type of offense.
Alabama's 1992 D is very good - they're just not as good as a lot of folks suggest.