BAMA-UT: Despite loss of Waddle, Tide offense keeps rolling
Alabama dominated Tennessee at Neyland Stadium on Saturday. (Unv. Alabama Media Relations)
By TIM GAYLE
Alabama punted on its first possession of the game, but scored touchdowns on the next four to take any suspense out of the Third Saturday in October with a 48-17 win over Tennessee at Neyland Stadium.
A crowd of 23,394 – Tennessee’s first sellout of the season – showed up to watch one of college football greatest rivalries, which doesn’t have quite the same luster after the second-ranked Crimson Tide won for the 14th consecutive time to stretch the series’ advantage to 20 games (58-38-7).
After the game, Alabama coach Nick Saban said his team had trouble focusing on the Volunteers after an emotional win over Georgia the week before, but was satisfied with the result.
“We didn’t have our best week coming off the Georgia game,” he said. “I don’t think we really played our best, to play to the standard that we’d like. But it’s great to win.”
The win was bittersweet for Saban after losing big-play threat Jaylen Waddle for the season on the game’s opening kickoff. One of college football’s most electrifying players broke his ankle seconds into the contest.
“It’s really a sad time for me, for Jaylen Waddle and his family,” Saban said. “He’s got a very similar injury to what (former Alabama tailback) Kenyon Drake had. It’s a high ankle sprain but also a fracture, so they’ll probably have to do surgery on him. If that’s the case, and we’re pretty certain that it is, he would probably be out for the year.”
After scoring on four of its five possessions in the first half, Alabama owned a commanding 28-10 lead at the half. Mac Jones completed 25 of 31 passes (after setting a school record with 19 consecutive completions) for 387 yards, throwing seven passes to John Metchie for 151 yards and seven to DeVonta Smith for 73 yards.
The Crimson Tide was 7 of 7 in the red zone and 7 of 12 on third down, statistics that Tennessee simply couldn’t match. After the game, Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt was asked about his team’s inability to compete with the conference’s best, particularly their biggest rival.
“Well, to be honest, they’ve been better than us, plain and simple,” Pruitt said. “We’ve played with them, in spurts, but from an execution, finishing standpoint, we’ve not been able to sustain and do that. For us to beat these guys today, we needed to play really clean football and we needed a couple of things to really go our way.
“I can assure you that the gap is closing. It might not show on the scoreboard today, but the gap is closing, I can assure you of that.”
Alabama, meanwhile, held the Vols to 4 of 16 on third-down conversions, its best performance of the season.
“At times we did OK, but I think we gave up at least three big plays, maybe four,” Saban said. “They were running the ball a lot and early in the game we weren’t stopping the run really well so we put a little bit more pressure on the secondary. In the second half, though, we really shouldn’t have given up the plays because we were playing split-safety coverages. We’ve got to be able to stop the run and not give up explosive plays, but I thought the defense played better tonight. This is probably the best we’ve played.”
Alabama freshman Malachi Moore broke open the game by forcing a fumble and returning it 28 yards to the end zone on the Vols’ first possession of the second half. It was Alabama’s first fumble return for a touchdown since Trevon Diggs picked up a Tennessee fumble in the end zone a year ago and returned it 100 yards for a touchdown.
The win was Alabama’s 29th consecutive victory over SEC East Division opponents and the 94th consecutive win over an unranked opponent. It was also Alabama’s 18th consecutive game of scoring 35 or more points.
Alabama (5-0) returns home to play Mississippi State next week while Tennessee (2-3) has an open date before traveling to Fayetteville to play Arkansas on Nov. 7.
“We’re really frustrated that we’re not playing the way we expect to play,” Pruitt said. “I think part of fixing it is recognizing it. I saw a lot of improvement from a lot of players today but it’s going to take all of us to play at a high level to beat those (Alabama) guys.”