Mark Mayfield - Back on Top!: The Alabama Crimson Tides 2015–16 Championship Football Season

Copyright 2016 by Mark Mayfield

Photography Copyright 2016 by Layton Dudley

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Tom Lau

Cover photo credit: AP Photo/Chris Carlson

Print ISBN: 978-1-61321-970-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61321-981-2

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

INTRODUCTION

A Season to Remember

T HE CROWD DINING ON CHICKEN and roast beef in the Paul Bryant Conference Center thundered its applause as Nick Saban walked to the podium. It was October 9, 2015, one of those busy fall Fridays in Tuscaloosa. Outside, the campus buzzed with anticipation of the big homecoming football clash with Arkansas the next day.

Saban began his remarks by welcoming these hundreds of Nick at Noon luncheon attendees to homecoming weekend and, as always, thanked them for their support. Yet, clearly something else was on his mind, something that apparently had been bothering him for six days now, and he couldnt let it go.

Anyone who knows anything about Saban understands the man is a perfectionist on and off a football field, but it is in moments like this, during these kinds of speeches that have become routine for him, that he offers a public glimpse into a legendary obsession with every detail and every aspect of Alabamas program.

This was, after all, a day to talk about the next opponent, the big, bruising Razorbacks, who were coming to town bent on finally taking down an Alabama team for the first time since Sabans arrival as the Crimson Tides coach in 2007. But first, the coach chose to make a point about last weeks game with the Georgia Bulldogs over in Athens.

Specifically, Saban wanted to talk about the last few seconds of the third quarter against Georgia, a proud team that had the unenviable distinction of being the first opponent in six years to open as a favorite against Alabama. Not that it mattered. The Crimson Tide ultimately would win by 28 points in a driving rainstorm.

Saban, however, wasnt concerned with the scoreboard. He was focused on those waning seconds of the third quarter, or, more exactly, the ten seconds it took Georgias star running back Nick Chubb to sprint through a gap and race 83 yards for a touchdown, untouched. Chubbs run did little more than cut Alabamas 38-3 lead to 38-10. It meant nothing in the final outcome and couldnt erase the humiliation dealt the Bulldogs in their own stadium.

Nevertheless, for Alabama, a defensive-minded team that had shut down Chubb the entire game up to that point, the lapse was egregious, simply not acceptable in a game the Crimson Tide owned from the second quarter. And for their coach, the man responsible for this unflinching domination, it was a cut to the heart.

The key word here is focus, Saban said, slowly building his nearly week-old case. If you dont have mental intensity in preparation, and every play in the game and in every game you play throughout the season, its amazing how things can go from good to bad very quickly.

This is one of the biggest challenges we have with young players. The players that we coach in college, he continued. Its the culture of young people that were trying to deal with, to get them to focus all the time. There was a great example in the game last week. We had stopped their run.

Saban looked out over the crowd, as if measuring their Xs and Os football knowledge, and pressed on.

Chubb had like 35 yards in rushing, or whatever, and (then came) one play, which we defended at least five times correctly in the game, which was just a zone dive play, Saban said. Backers got the A gap, safetys gonna come down and take the B gap. And the safety comes down to the B gap, and the linebacker jumps over to the B gap. So we got two guys in the B gap and nobody in the A gap, and the ball spits and it spits so fast that the rest of the secondary could not converge on it. So one play, one player, lack of focus in terms of what he was supposed to do, and you go from a dominating defensive performance to an 83-yard touchdown and nobody touched the guy.

Focus.

It was not just a word heard by this audience paying a relatively modest $60 a plate at one of Sabans weekly fall luncheons. It was at the core of every drill, every workout, every practice, every meeting going forward during the 2015 season.

Ultimately, it would be the reason Saban and his team would dispatch Arkansas for the ninth consecutive time the next day, and three months later win a 45-40 thriller for the ages against Clemson in Glendale, Arizona, to claim Alabamas fourth national championship in seven years.

Saban would say repeatedly, both before and after the championship game, that this team was special, that it earned its way back to the top of college football by choosing to refocus and recommit after a shocking early-season home loss to Ole Miss. That had been a sloppy, turnover-filled game that led many national analysts to question whether Alabamas dynasty was over. Saban would use it as motivation, famously asserting that the media had us dead and buried and gone. Gone.

En route to the championship, Alabama reeled off 12 consecutive victories following the Ole Miss game, including a 29-15 Southeastern Conference championship win over Florida, a 38-0 rout over Michigan State in the Cotton Bowlwhich served as a College Football Playoff semifinal at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texasand the victory over Clemson after a dramatic and wild back-and-forth clash at University of Phoenix Stadium. The fact that Alabama was able to secure the Clemson win following a gutsyand successfulonside kick with the score tied, 24-24, in the fourth quarter underscored a simple fact: no program and coach could win four national titles in seven years without being prepared to step out of their comfort zone and do the unexpected with a game on the line.

For Alabama, that meant trying to dull the momentum of Clemsons outstanding quarterback, Deshaun Watson, by keeping the ball away from him. The surprise onside kick, called after Clemson lined up in a receiving formation that left a gap open on one side, was executed to perfection by Alabamas Adam Griffith, who popped the ball up toward the sideline. The Tides Marlon Humphrey caught it over his shoulder near midfield, and Alabama not only maintained possession, but dramatically changed the game. Two plays later, Bama quarterback Jake Coker threw a 51-yard touchdown strike to a wide-open O.J. Howard, and the Crimson Tide took a 31-24 lead that it would never relinquish.

We were tired on defense and werent doing a great job of getting them stopped, and I felt like if we didnt do something or take a chance to change the momentum of the game that we wouldnt have a chance to win, Saban said.