Alabama doesn’t measure up in the big moments against Oklahoma and now Tide must play with urgency

 

TUSCALOOSA — The Heisman moment and the championship moment were unfurled at the feet of Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson and the Crimson Tide offense Saturday evening.

The No. 4-ranked team in the country was going to push the ball off the goal line without a running game and drive 94 yards in the last seven minutes for the touchdown to beat No. 11 Oklahoma and its NFL-caliber defensive line. Or Simpson was going to skillfully steer Alabama about 75 yards down Saban Field so Conor Talty could kick the winning field goal. Tide 24, Sooners 23 and 100,000 fans might not have rushed the field and taken down the goalposts — they don’t do that here — but they would have shaken loose some mortar at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Simpson, who completed 28 of 42 passes for 326 yards and a touchdown, said he had supreme confidence all of that would happen. But it didn’t.

“I just wish I would have had a different type of answer,” he said.

After converting a fourth down, Simpson was sacked for the fourth time, then threw incomplete on two of the next three plays. Sooners 23, Tide 21 and those 100,000 fans were left to wonder if Alabama is a championship football team, even after winning eight straight games.

And that, Simpson said, is as much a problem as losing the game. Forget Heisman moments. Winning takes care of everything.

“People are fixated on the bigger picture, right?” he said afterward while facing a faceless swarm of cameras and squinting into unforgiving lights. There have been happier root canals.

Tide fans expect perfection. So does Simpson and that might be one of the problems facing this team.

Simpson’s perfectionist nature may work against him. Coach Kalen DeBoer said in the aftermath his quarterback should throw the ball away if necessary instead of pressing when an unblocked linebacker tries to rip his heart out or his internal clock is sending alarm bells after three seconds.

With no threat of a running game, Oklahoma’s pass rush freely attacked Simpson, who stood up admirably to it despite throwing a pick-six and fumbling under pressure.

“You’ve got to understand the situation,” DeBoer said. “I know it’s third down and he wants to stay on the field. You’ve got to understand you’re playing pretty good, too, and you’ve just got to live with punting once in a while…. he’s got to get rid of it and be OK with throwing it away.”

It’s also true that any semblance of a running game that could guarantee four yards per carry would have helped enormously in a two-point game — and that, if anything, will be what blocks the Tide from going far in the postseason.

Simpson, who is always gracious and introspective after games, knows Alabama (8-2) is now in a tougher position to make the 12-team College Football Playoff. One or two losses won’t keep a good team out, although a first-round bye is now a fantasy and a home game much more unlikely.

The Tide has a bigger problem — to reach the playoffs, it must win at suddenly rejuvenated Auburn, which is never easy, and the Tigers’ defense can exploit the one glaring weakness of Alabama’s offense.

Simpson said the Tide will play with a sense of urgency the rest of the way.

“Everybody’s mad,” Simpson said. “These guys fight their tails off every single day. We control our own destiny and that’s what we need to do. … I’m very confident. We’ve got to win out now. But nothing’s guaranteed. We saw what Texas A&M did today.”

The No. 3 Aggies trailed South Carolina 30-3 Saturday before rallying to win 31-30.

Alabama showed plenty of mettle despite getting tangled in its own barbed wire. It trailed 17-7 before taking a 21-20 lead in the fourth quarter but couldn’t come from behind one more time.

The Sooners, whose longest scoring drive was 41 yards, vacuumed up plentiful Tide errors — a long punt return for a field goal, an 87-yard pick-six, a touchdown after Ryan Williams’ fumbled punt return at Alabama’s 31 and Simpson’s fumble under pressure at the Tide’s 28, leading to Tate Sandell’s 24-yard field goal three plays into the fourth quarter that proved to be the game-winning points. Talty also had a partially blocked 36-yard field goal while Sandell kicked one from 52 yards.

Alabama doubled OU in total yardage (406-212), although the running game again provided little juice.

“That’s the part that is just really frustrating for everyone,” said DeBoer, who is now 19-4 against AP Top 25 teams, although the Tide is 0-4 against Oklahoma in the regular season. “You win the time of possession, you win everything, totally ours, and come away with a loss. … We missed our opportunities and that’s what hurt so much. Throughout the game, we really didn’t feel like we couldn’t move the ball. We felt like we could put it in the end zone. It’s just these one-off plays that were the takeaways and then it became an uphill battle. … We played a lot of great snaps out there but the turnover battle, we obviously got killed there.”

Simpson said he would watch tape of the game Saturday night but he wasn’t likely to see anything that made him feel better.

“They brought some exotic stuff that we hadn’t seen before and I’ve got to do a better job of taking care of the ball,” he said. “I don’t think they had any turnovers and we had three. We shot ourselves in the foot.”

It was a bloody mess. Until Saturday, Alabama had six turnovers in nine games and its plus-10 turnover margin led the SEC. Simpson had just one interception coming in.

“There’s about 10 plays that if we could add back, I feel like the outcome would be different,” Simpson said.

Football players must make more football plays but one has to wonder about future outcomes when running back Jam Miller has a higher run-blocking grade than any of the Tide’s starting linemen, according to Pro Football Focus, although center Parker Brailsford said Alabama couldn’t keep trying to run after falling behind 17-7.

Little things are holding the Tide back, said Brailsford, the SEC’s Co-Offensive Lineman of the Week who didn’t allow a sack or quarterback pressure the week before against LSU.

“Maybe one guy slipped off a block late or whatever and we just aren’t able to get that big hit that we want,” he said. “But it’s starting to come together a little bit and we’re starting to see more longer runs. Eventually, we’ll click. I think we’ll respond great. I think we’re gonna come together and it’s gonna be a great thing to watch.”

Alabama fans must hope Brailsford is correct because watching this team well into the new year will depend on how well it runs the football and gives Simpson some help.