Alabama grabs 10-7 lead over Washington

It’s a legitimate question for the Alabama offensive coordinator in the wake of the Crimson Tide’s 24-7 win against Washington in the Peach Bowl. Ohio State is the first team to reach the playoff without winning a conference championship.

Play after play, Washington’s offense was stuffed or halted before completing one first down. “After that, we got our stuff together”.

“The head is somewhere else, but I’ve got to back the Pac, man”, he said. Marlon Humphrey did it in the season-opener against USC with a pick six to give the Tide a two-score lead in the first half.

During one of the rare occasions when the defense slacked, the Alabama offense demonstrated the capability to win a shootout in a 48-43 road win against Ole Miss. Scarbrough rushed for a career-high 180 yards, which set a bowl record for the Tide. “It wasn’t Jalen Hurts’ day to shine, and I’m OK with that”. “We started to get more and more confidence in the second half even though they were trying to do tricky things”.

The Huskies scored on their second possession, but didn’t score again. In last year’s championship, the Alabama system withstood a furious effort from Watson; watching the game was like seeing a building shudder but remain standing through an natural disaster. “The guy is hard to tackle. I don’t think this game is close”. And they have to get the ball in the hands of John Ross, a burner who caught 17 touchdown passes this season. Cameron Van Winkle’s extra point made it 7-0. Alabama just takes your soul.

But the Crimson Tide responded on its next drive, marching 78 yards behind a suddenly-dominant offensive line. The quarterbacks are highly productive but pack different skill sets as Washington’s Jake Browning is an efficient pro-style signal caller while Alabama’s Jalen Hurts is a multi-faceted player who runs almost as well as he throws. So if Scarbrough was taking a breather, coaches couldn’t put him in the game without giving up the advantage of brevity between plays. It went up against its presumptive best matchups and rolled over them in consecutive weeks in wins over then-No. It was No. 1 in run defense, No. 2 in run offense. However, facing a Washington team that came into the game leading the nation with a plus 21 turnover margin, the true freshman was able to avoid making any costly mistakes in the game.

The start wasn’t so bad for Washington.

It was his first real look at the team that had dominated the line of questioning over the previous three weeks – how good, how big, how strong Alabama was in 2016.

Alabama was not overwhelming statistically. Petersen, who left Boise State and turned around the Washington program in three years, is the West Coast coaching version of Saban. The Huskies had 29 carries for 44 net yards.

Washington’s players don’t have any experience on the big stage and you have to think the magical run will come to an end at some point. The Crimson Tide opened as a 14-point favorite and that has moved down slightly to 13.5. On the flip side, Alabama gave up 18 passes covering at least 30 yards, and eight of those went for 40 or more.

The Tide had 5 sacks for 38 yards, Washington 3-20. He also ran for 57 yards on 15 carries with two touchdowns.

Toward the end of the 2015 regular season, Alabama leaned heavily on Henry because-at times-he was the only one who could reliably produce yards. A fumble followed by an interception returned for a touchdown demoralized the overmatched Washington team.

Adam Griffith was good on his only field goal attempt and averaged 65 yards on kickoffs. Yeah. that team also lost 52-6 to Alabama.