One week after suffering a stunning loss at Vanderbilt, No. 7 Alabama did just enough to keep its College Football Playoff hopes alive Saturday in a stomach-twisting 27-25 win over South Carolina.
While it’s inevitable that two-loss teams will qualify for the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff, you likely won’t see an at-large team with two losses against unranked teams on its resume. That’s where Alabama would have found itself if the Crimson Tide had suffered back-to-back regular season losses for the first time since 2007.
College basketball wins and losses are grouped into quadrants. Quad 1 wins are like gold on Selection Sunday, while Quad 3 and 4 losses drag your resume down like asbestos drags down the value of a home. Losses of the Quad 3 and Quad 4 variety — the proverbial “bad losses” — can be deal-breakers for a team’s postseason aspirations.
Though there is no quad system equivalent in college football, the concept applies with the expanded playoff. Not all losses are created equal, and Alabama avoided the football-equivalent of a second consecutive Quad 3 loss on Saturday in a 27-25 home win over South Carolina.
With road games against top-20 foes Tennessee, LSU and Oklahoma still ahead, Alabama may still suffer a second defeat before the CFP field is unveiled on Sunday, Dec. 8.
But a second loss that comes inside a hostile venue against the Volunteers, Tigers or Sooners will be much easier for the CFP Selection Committee to stomach than a second loss that came at home against South Carolina on the heels of the Vanderbilt debacle.
As it stands, the Crimson Tide are still afloat on the USS Jalen Milroe, which is the vessel Alabama is clinging to as it navigates some of the choppiest waters encountered by the program since former coach Nick Saban’s first season in ’07.
If that ship is going to reach the safe harbor of the CFP, there are some holes that must be plugged. A week after committing two turnovers that led directly to 14 Vanderbilt points, Milroe made three more catastrophic errors that nearly cost the Crimson Tide another game.
Two of them came in rapid succession late in the second half as South Carolina scored 12 points in under 2 minutes to flip the script after falling behind 14-0 early.
To be clear, there are issues with the Crimson Tide that extend beyond Milroe’s imperfections, namely a defense that is vulnerable against mobile quarterbacks and has a penchant for giving up long touchdown passes on fourth-down plays.
Milroe is talented enough to cover up the defense’s flaws, as he illustrated in a momentous win over then-No. 1 Georgia that now feels like an increasingly distant memory.
But he’s also showing that he can be bad enough to make the Crimson Tide vulnerable to defeat against anyone in the SEC.
With Alabama up 14-7 and under 2 minutes left in the first half Saturday, the Crimson Tide opted to get aggressive from their own 13-yard line. With no receivers open, Milroe retreated and retreated and retreated until there was nowhere else to go. Eventually, he threw the football away — committing intentional grounding in the process — from Alabama’s end zone.
The play resulted in a safety, which gave South Carolina two points and the football.
Alabama’s defense quickly forced a turnover, returning the football to the Crimson Tide, who doubled down on their effort to get more points before the half.
But Milroe telegraphed a pass over the middle with under 10 seconds left on the clock, and South Carolina’s Jalen Kilgore jumped the route for an interception that led to three more South Carolina points.
His third turnover, an interception with 12:17 remaining, could have been a season-wrecker. Trailing 19-14, Alabama was driving when Milroe lifted an ill-advised pass to the end zone that was intercepted by South Carolina’s Fortune O’Donnell.
Even a field goal by South Carolina on its subsequent possession would have put the Gamecocks ahead eight and backed the Crimson Tide into a corner. Instead, the Gamecocks bailed Milroe out with a fumble of their own.
The difference against Vanderbilt was that the Commodores took care of the ball and won the turnover battle 2-0. But the Gamecocks were even more reckless with the football than the Crimson Tide, fumbling three times before quarterback LaNorris Sellers threw a game-ending interception.
It was the same way for Alabama against Georgia as the Crimson Tide won the turnover battle 4-1. The Bulldogs’ own fatal miscues helped mask a Milroe interception late in the first half that came as the Crimson Tide were driving with a chance to take a commanding 35-7 lead.
Alabama has now turned the football over nine times this season. Last year’s national-title winner, Michigan, turned the football over just eight times in 15 games.
Susceptible as the Crimson Tide have looked defensively since the second half of that Georgia game, they have come up with enough turnovers of their own to keep Milroe’s miscues from looming even larger.
Milroe is obviously playing with more freedom and confidence under DeBoer than he was last season under Saban and young offensive coordinator Tommy Rees. The early results were magnificent. Milroe established himself as the early-season Heisman Trophy favorite with a series of dominant performances.
But that freedom and confidence have been mixed with an increasingly concerning recklessness the past two weeks, and the Crimson Tide are fortunate that recklessness didn’t sink their CFP hopes on Saturday.
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