Alabama’s Loss to Vanderbilt Bring Questions About Readiness After Signature Win
Congratulations to Clay Helton's Georgia Southern Eagles. Despite being on a bye in Week 6, they became the transitive-property champions of college football in the Peachtree State thanks to Vanderbilt's 40-35 upset of top-ranked Alabama.
See, Georgia Southern beat Sun Belt Conference rival Georgia State 38-21 in Week 5. The Eagles' win came on the heels of the Panthers knocking off Vanderbilt 36-32 in Atlanta. Then Vanderbilt's landmark victory on Saturday followed Alabama toppling Georgia in a 41-34 instant classic.
Of course, no one thinks Georgia Southern would stand any chance against Georgia—no disrespect to the Eagles intended. But then, who could have foreseen Alabama's result in Nashville?
In particular, the Crimson Tide giving up more points to the Commodores than Georgia State did stands out. It's easy to look at Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe throwing for only one touchdown while committing two turnovers and suggest his Heisman Trophy candidacy took a hit, but a play Milroe made in the second half that was called back for an illegal forward-pass penalty may well have changed the game's entire complexion.
What's more, Milroe wouldn't have needed to put on an otherworldly performance akin to his effort vs. Georgia had the Crimson Tide defense not permitted the Commodores to convert 12 of their 18 third downs. Alabama's struggles with Vanderbilt's shovel passes and sweeps shaped the most vexing loss the program has endured in recent memory.
Any given Saturday is a fun bit of coach speak that suggests results akin to this one go down with some regularity. That just isn't the case when it comes to Vanderbilt beating Alabama, however.
The Tide ran off 23 consecutive wins over the Commodores in a streak that included a victory by the dismal 3-8 Alabama team of 2000 under Mike DuBose. Mike Shula's disappointing 2006 campaign prompted his ouster from Tuscaloosa and the hire of Nick Saban —but not before the Shula-coached Tide eked out a 13-10 win over Vanderbilt.
One must go back to Sept. 29, 1984, for the last given Saturday in which a Vanderbilt side beat Alabama on the field (excluding vacated results). Not only does this date reflect the significance of the series' 2024 result, but it also has meaning early in the tenure of first-year Tide head coach Kalen DeBoer.
Ray Perkins was the last Alabama coach to lose to the Commodores. Perkins was also the last Crimson Tide coach before DeBoer tabbed to immediately follow a true legend.
Perkins' loss to Vanderbilt came in his second year after taking over for Bear Bryant and was part of a 5-6 campaign—Alabama's first sub-.500 finish since the 1957 Tide finished 2-7-1 under Jennings B. Whitworth.
Reaction to the 1984 Vanderbilt loss was predictably hostile. Fred Grimm's column in the Oct. 7, 1984, Miami Herald quotes Alabama backer Doug Ferrell as sporting "a facial expression mean enough to curdle whiskey" when he uttered the words, "Run him out of here... Get Ray Perkins out of Tuscaloosa."
DeBoer's currently 4-1 team is presumably in as much danger of matching the 1984 Tide's five-win finish as Georgia is to losing that previously mentioned hypothetical matchup with Georgia Southern.
And, even when the transitive property starts getting tossed around in earnest, as it does each November in the buildup to the College Football Playoff, the Vanderbilt loss may not be that much more of an outlier for the Tide than results posted by other tournament hopefuls.
Alabama had company in the SEC in Week 6, with fourth-ranked Tennessee losing a similarly confounding conference game, 19-14 at Arkansas. Ninth-ranked Missouri, which came into Saturday tied with Army for the nation's longest winning streak, proceeded to lose a 41-10 laugher at No. 25 Texas A&M.
Yet that doesn't mean that in the meantime there won't be sentiment similar to that expressed by Mr. Ferrell back in 1984 emanating from some corners of the internet about DeBoer in 2024.
The Saturday result is an early inflection for the post-Nick Saban era of Alabama football. The Crimson Tide faced the question of how they would respond to a signature win, and the answer was: not well.
They now have to respond to a much more rare question for this program in the past two decades: How does it respond to a shocking loss?
"We're going to find out how much we care about each other and what it looks like moving forward," DeBoer said in his postgame press conference.
