LSU Tigers

Mighty Alabama appears merely mortal now -- and the stats don't lie

Published Sep. 24, 2015 10:00 a.m. ET

share

facebookxredditlink

Stewart Mandel

Alabama's 43-37 home loss to Ole Miss last weekend evoked yet another round of "Nick Saban's dynasty is over" pieces, a predictable reaction that now occurs literally every time the Tide lose a football game -- which still isn't very often.

While 'Bama had the audacity the past two seasons to not win a national championship, it's still won 83 percent of its games (going 25-5) since the confetti last rained down after its 2012 BCS title-game drubbing of Notre Dame. It also won an SEC championship and earned the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff just last season. I'm not penning any obits just yet.

However, few would dispute Saban's Tide appear more mortal than they ever did during their run of three national championships in four years from 2009-12, and Dan Wolken's USA Today account from Saturday's game included two supporting stats that caught my attention. Since the start of the 2013 season, he noted, 'Bama is just 4-5 against Top 15 foes (as ranked at the time of the game) and has allowed more than 40 points on five separate occasions (including two wins).

To put that in perspective, Saban's teams went 8-2 against Top 15 opponents the previous two seasons (both of which culminated with rings) and, most notably, did not allow 40 points in a game even once for five straight seasons (2008-12).

So yes, the Tide have lost a step. But fortunately for 2015 Alabama, it does not have to face its 2009 or 2011 predecessors. So I decided to do a deeper dig and see how those numbers compare with the rest of the field.

Case in point, it's unrealistic to think any team would continually win eight out of every 10 games against the best opponents on its schedule. But what is a proper comparison? Here's where that 4-5 Top 15 record stacks up over the same time period with the Tide's primary SEC competitors as well as a few notable programs from other conferences:

Record vs. Top 15 opponents, 2013-15

It's hard to make definitive conclusions when some teams played more of these games than others, but 'Bama is about middle-of-the-pack. That being said, those five losses are the Tide's only defeats the past three seasons, whereas Stanford, No. 1 on this list, also has five losses to non-Top 15 teams.

Perhaps the most relevant takeaway for Alabama is that it's no longer the clear-cut top big-game performer in the SEC, but nor is anyone else.

Far more alarming, it turns out, are those five 40-plus-point defensive outings. With high-scoring offenses so commonplace in college football today, I wasn't sure going in whether that number would even be an outlier.

Well, it is. Here's where the top 12 teams in this week's AP poll (Alabama is No. 12) stack up over the same time period:

Number of games of 40+ points allowed since start of 2013 season

Wow.

It appears that Saban and coordinator Kirby Smart's defense is not just down from its own formerly dominant standard but in fact is falling behind many of its national peers.

And it's no coincidence that the five opponents involved in those performances -- 2013 Texas A&M (a 49-42 'Bama win) and Oklahoma (45-31 loss); 2014 Auburn (55-44 win) and Ohio State (42-35 loss); and 2015 Ole Miss (43-37 loss) -- all run modern no-huddle offenses. Saban has made no bones about his contempt for that trend, which prevents him from substituting down-by-down to fit his desired coverage. (His own offense now uses tempo itself, running a staggering 101 plays in last week's game.)

And that problem is reflected in the Tide's overall defensive performance, which has notably slipped dating to Saban's first great 'Bama team in 2008:

'Bama's total defense, scoring defense (national rankings in parentheses)

First of all, how ridiculously good was that 2011 defense? That's the team that beat LSU in a rematch in the BCS title game, holding the Tigers without a touchdown in either meeting. More recently, though, the defense took a noticeable dip in 2013 and has remained about the same ever since.

But I wanted to go even deeper than that. What exactly is Alabama's defense worse at than it was three years ago? Because it's not like the Tide have dipped dramatically relative to their peers -- they were still a Top 20 overall defense and Top 10 scoring defense just last season, so they're obviously doing something right.

The two areas I homed in on were big plays allowed (which, just in watching Alabama, seems like there's a lot more of these days) and opponents' third-down conversions (one of Saban's biggest points of emphasis.) And as I guessed, the Tide have regressed significantly in both areas:

20-plus-yard plays allowed*

* -- cfbstats.com data only available since 2010.

Opponents' third-down conversion %

In both areas, Alabama saw a significant dip last season. Three games into 2015 is too small a sample size to say whether that trend will continue. In last week's Ole Miss loss, the Rebels had seven plays of at least 20 yards (one of them admittedly extremely fluky) but converted only 4-of-14 third downs (28.6 percent).

Finally, it seems shortsighted to put only the Tide's defense under the microscope. Their offense, which had five turnovers against the Rebels, deserves its share of the blame.

For the most part, Alabama still runs the ball as effectively as it always has under Saban. But the quarterback concerns the Tide have had ever since three-year standout AJ McCarron moved on to the NFL are proving well warranted:

Alabama QB pass efficiency ratings

Many dismissed McCarron at the time as a pedestrian "game manager." Here's guessing Alabama would love to have him back. This year's QBs are producing at a considerably lower level than at any point in McCarron's career and in fact the worst of any Tide quarterback since 2008.

Mind you, that '08 team still managed to win its first 12 games that season and reach the SEC championship and a BCS bowl. But it also produced a much stingier defense than recent Tide teams.

The dynasty isn't over yet. But if this year's Alabama team wants to extend Saban's string of seven straight double-digit win seasons, it needs to either cut down on big plays defensively or get a lot better quarterback play. The Tide have shown they can win big in spite of one or the other -- but not both.

Stewart Mandel is a senior college sports columnist for FOXSports.com. He covered college football and basketball for 15 years at Sports Illustrated. You can follow him on Twitter @slmandel and Facebook. Send emails and Mailbag questions to Stewart.Mandel@fox.com.

share

Get more from LSU Tigers Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more

in this topic

LSU Tigers

Ole Miss Rebels

Alabama Crimson Tide

AJ McCarron

National Football League