Tide rise to Saban’s difficulty, rally past Ole Miss
OXFORD, Miss.– Still reeling after a heartbreaking loss at LSU and officially removed from reaching the SEC Championship, Alabama didn’t fold shop on the roadway at Ole Miss on Saturday. The Crimson Tide instead came back from a double-digit deficit and held on late to beat the Rebels 30-24.
A happy coach Nick Saban told press reporters later, “It was a difficult night in a great deal of ways, but a terrific night for us since I believe we took an action in the right direction as a football team.”
Alabama prevented snapping its 184-game streak without losing consecutive regular-season games.
The streak, which dated back to Saban’s first season at Alabama in 2007, is the longest such active streak in college football and the longest because Oklahoma went 256 games from 1999 to 2020.
Saban stated he challenged his group before the game to “play to the standard” and “take it individual.”
“I think that’s the big thing that we wished to get our players to do is, you’re responsible for the identity that you create and it’s individual in terms of how you play and how you compete in the game to attempt to control the person you’re betting,” he stated. “And I saw a great deal of that in the 2nd half.”
Saban stated he was proud of the tough running by Jase McClellan, who needed to take on more of the load with Jahmyr Gibbs injured. McClellan represented 84 yards on 19 carries.Saban also applauded the offensive line for stepping up in the second half.Bryce Young, the ruling Heisman Trophy winner, finished 21 of 33 passes for 209 backyards, three touchdowns and no interceptions.But it was the defense that probably took the greatest advance against Ole Miss.After giving up 17 points in the very first 20 minutes, it permitted just one touchdown the remainder of the game.Ole Miss had the ball on first-and-10 on the Alabama 14-yard line with a chance to score the consent goal
with less than a minute left. But the defense required an incompletion, took on Rebels quarterback Jaxson Dart for no gain and sacked Dart for a 6-yard loss. Then, on fourth-and-16, Brian Branch broke up a pass to seal the win.Defensive lineman Byron Young was a standout in the front seven with 11 tackles– two for a loss– and 2 quarterback rushes.
“It ended up being individual to all of us just because we saw what people been stating,”Young said.”We saw people write us off. And we seem like truly, simply for
ourselves, we got to reveal ourselves who we are and we got to reveal ourselves that we are what we state we are. So I think that was the most significant thing for us. “Alabama will host Austin Peay next Saturday before it liquidates the regular season in the house Nov. 26 versus Auburn.