This is an opinion column.
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When Alabama was bad this season, the football on the field was hard to watch.
So it was on Thursday here in Pasadena, Calif., during Alabama’s 38-3 loss to indomitable Indiana.
But we’ve seen this team before, so no one was really surprised.
The skull dragging at Florida State was not a fluke, it turns out, and Alabama’s running game this season will haunt the dreams of Johnny Musso, Eddie Lacy and Derrick Henry from now to eternity.
Or at least until incoming freshman back EJ Crowell puts on the pads for spring practice.
We endured Alabama at its worst this season, and surfed the high with this Tide, but nothing — and I mean nothing — could have prepared anyone who can even spell the word F.O.O.T.B.A.W.L. for the Alabama Rose Bowl blunder that will live in infamy.
You know the play. It’s burned into your brain forever.
What in the world was Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer even thinking?
A Wildcat shovel pass on fourth-and-1 from Alabama’s own 34-yard line?
After two timeouts and a fake, fake punt that faked out nobody?
DeBoer loves being a video-game gambler, but this was the Rose Bowl and Alabama was only trailing one of the best defenses in the country 3-0.
It wasn’t time to risk it all and get cute. Just punt the ball and play defense.
There is nothing wrong with calling a punt. A punt is not a loss. A punt is not a defeat. A punt is not a sign of weakness.
In the SEC, for generations and generations, teams punted the ball, played defense and ran the ball with the meanness of a bull after a branding.
But DeBoer is not of the SEC, and it shows badly sometimes. Longtime Alabama fans bristle at DeBoer’s style of West Coast, A.I.-mode football, and I might not completely agree with that extreme edge of the fandom, but I get it.
Just punt the ball.
Give credit to DeBoer for owning the mistake. He called himself out during his halftime interview and then provided a thoughtful response after the game when asked, point blank, “What were you thinking?”
“It just felt like one of those games when you got to take advantage of possessions,” DeBoer said. “And obviously when you fall short, obviously, it was the wrong decision, right? We don’t get the first down, we give them a short field and they make a nice play on third down.
“It’s a belief in the guys on offense and it’s a belief on the guys on defense that in a worst-case scenario we’ll hold them to a field goal, and obviously it didn’t turn out that way. I try not to be reckless, but I try to be aggressive.”
But it was reckless. It was a Wildcat shovel pass on fourth-and-one from the 34 after two timeouts, one by Indiana and then another by Alabama after the Crimson Tide lined up to punt but then changed formations with quarterback Ty Simpson moving under center.
Simpson, it turns out, was just trying to give DeBoer more time to think about the situation.
Perhaps he and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb had too much time to think.
DeBoer then coached himself into a 10-point hole with quite possibly the most asinine play call in the history of organized sport. It didn’t cost Alabama the game outright, but it tarnished the Tide’s mystique.
For his part, Indiana coach Curt Cignetti made a point to acknowledge Alabama’s history and tradition after the game.
Coach Cig then took a direct shot at Alabama and DeBoer. I’ll never forget it.
This is what Alabama did to teams when he was at Alabama with Nick Saban, Cignetti said.
“Breaking their will by running the ball,” Cignetti said. “It shows up in the third and the fourth quarters. That’s the way to do it.”
I’m being completely serious when I write this. Can Alabama get it over with and name Curt Cignetti the Tide’s head-coach-in-waiting?
Is that kosher?
Is that something athletics director Greg Byrne can make happen before the Peach Bowl?
Cignetti and Indiana are going to win the national championship. I know there are two games to go, and Indiana matches up with Oregon next, but the Hoosiers looked like the perfect team against Alabama.
“Hoos-sier! Dad-dy!” they chanted during the final minutes of the game, which is, of course, a clever play on, “Who’s your daddy?”
It wasn’t the terrible fourth-down play that caused Alabama to lose this game, obviously, but it was emblematic of a larger concern. Did Byrne make the right hire when he chose the replacement for Saban? I’m still not sure, and neither is anybody.
I know what I saw, though. Alabama got Alabama’d by Indiana. The Tide had no chance against the Hoosiers in the Rose Bowl, and that phrase is something I never thought I’d write in my entire career.
Alabama’s offense gained 193 yards of total offense, and most of those were trash gains when the game was gone and quarterback Simpson was on the bench. Maybe DeBoer will live down this Rose Bowl next season, but it’s going to take a running game to get him there.
“There is a fine line between what we had out there today and being at the very top,” DeBoer said. “It is a very fine line. You got to start over from scratch by putting good people around you. It’s such a fine line between being here and being on the top.”
There was a canyon between Alabama and Indiana, though, and Cignetti saw it early. The look on his face after DeBoer’s fourth-down call said it all, too. He arched an eyebrow and cocked his head skyward after Indiana’s defense stuffed Alabama’s desperation play in the first half.
Who the heck am I coaching against, said the look.
Maybe we’ll figure it out by next season.
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