BAMA-ARK: Young's record-setting day saves the Tide's bacon
Alabama held off Arkansas to win Saturday, clinching the SEC Western Division title in the process. (UA Media Relations)
By TIM GAYLE
There were times when Alabama looked almost unstoppable on Saturday.
Then there were times when the stumbling, can’t-get-out-of-its-way Crimson Tide threatened to hand the game over to the Arkansas Razorbacks.
But Bryce Young, on a record-setting night, torched the Razorback secondary one last time, then ran in the two-point conversion, and second-ranked Alabama escaped with a 42-35 win at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Senior Day.
“I mean, it says right here (on the stat sheet) that he passed for 559 yards,” Arkansas coach Sam Pittman said, when asked for his impression of Young. “I’d say he’s pretty darn good. He made some great plays when he broke the pocket and had a few nice throws to the side. Looked like (Patrick) Mahomes sometimes out there. I thought he had a heck of a game. He should be in the Heisman Trophy talk. He’s a really good player.”
Young completed 31 of 40 passes for 559 yards and five touchdowns, breaking the record of Scott Hunter -- who was, coincidentally, at the game as an honorary game captain -- who threw for 484 yards in a losing effort in the 1969 Iron Bowl at Legion Field. Young accounted for 548 total yards (after accounting for sacks), breaking the record of 484 set by Blake Sims against Florida in 2014 and Young’s 11.9 yards per play is second only to Tua Tagovailoa’s 2018 performance against The Citadel. Young’s 77.5 percent completion rate on 30 or more completions is the most in a regular-season game and trails only Mac Jones’ shredding of the Ohio State defense in last year’s championship game.
“I think we had a really good plan on offense,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said. “We had a good plan to attack the eight-drop (coverage) and he made really good decisions about who to throw the ball to. The guy had a fantastic game … and really did a good job of taking what they give.”
Young deflected the praise after the game.
“For all the great quarterbacks that have played here, to have an accomplishment like that is definitely a blessing,” he said. “It’s going to go down and be written as something that I did, but in reality that’s a reflection of the whole team. That’s my O-line protecting for me, that’s the receivers making my job easy and getting open, running backs helping in both the pass and run game and ‘OB’ (offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien) calling great plays. So it’s really a team accomplishment.”
On the other side of the field, Arkansas quarterback K.J. Jefferson shined as well, completing 22 of 30 passes for 326 yards and three touchdowns. But the Razorbacks converted a fake field goal into a first down, stripped Alabama tight end Cameron Latu of the ball just short of the goal line and benefited from a holding call that wiped out a Young touchdown run on a possession that ended with a missed field goal attempt.
“We certainly did a lot of things that continued to give them opportunities in the game, but I think we played great offensively,” Saban said. “We left a lot of points on the board where we could put the game away. Defensively, we gave up a couple of big plays, but the big thing was they were like 10 of 19 on third and fourth down, so when we had opportunities to get off the field, we didn’t get off the field, they extended drives, and in some cases it led to touchdowns.”
Not counting the two possessions that ended each half, Alabama’s final seven possessions resulted in four touchdowns, a field goal, a missed field goal and Latu’s fumble as the Tide rolled up 671 total yards, the fifth most in school history.
“We tried a lot of different things out there,” Pittman said of his defense. “Sometimes, it worked. A lot of times, it didn’t. It wasn’t that we just sat there all night in the same thing. You’d think if you were in three-deep, you wouldn’t have a guy run by you in the middle of the field, but he did.”
Jameson Williams had 190 receiving yards and three touchdowns on eight receptions, while John Metchie had 173 yards and a touchdown on 10 receptions.
The Crimson Tide did its job on offense. Yet, its own struggles in each phase of the game left the Tide unable to put away its opponent.
“What I look at is how did we execute in the game,” Saban said. “What did we do in the game that kept us from putting the game away. On the last (Arkansas) touchdown, 8 (Christian Harris) is not supposed to be on the running back (Raheim Sanders), so we don’t play the coverage the way it’s supposed to be played. He might have scored anyway, I don’t know, but you at least like to think that you’re out there executing and doing what you’re supposed to do.
“Guys don’t take the right guys on slides or boots, we turn people loose in man-to-man, we get a penalty when we score a touchdown that would put the game away, then we take a sack and miss the field goal. So all these things contribute to not putting the game away. That’s the kind of stuff that we need to fix, but it’s also stuff that can be fixed.”
They’re running out of time to make corrections, with next week’s Iron Bowl at Jordan-Hare Stadium closing out the regular season. Alabama did clinch the Southeastern Conference West Division title with the win and a berth against top-ranked Georgia in Atlanta, an obvious comparison that Pittman, the former Georgia assistant who has played both, wanted to shy away from making.
“I really don’t want to answer it,” he said. “I mean, they’re both really good teams, they’re both physical. Alabama throws the ball more than Georgia does. Georgia, you know, they’ve got different people. Georgia believes in turning around and hammering you (with the run) and play action off of it. Both (are) really good football teams.”
So, too, is Arkansas, he said, disappointed that his team dropped its 15th consecutive meeting to the Tide, but proud of his team’s effort.
“It would be hard to look at the Arkansas Razorbacks and not be proud of the effort and the resiliency that we showed tonight and the physicality,” Pittman said. “I just told (the players) the days of getting kicked around and getting our teeth kicked in are over. I think we proved that.”