BAMA BREEZE
Sensational Smith, Crimson Tide bash Buckeyes in rolling to sixth crown under Saban
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla.— As a jalopy of a college football season in a pandemic managed to lumber to a finish Monday night, it also managed to showcase a player so dazzling and precise he looks like he never spent a moment lumbering, not even in practice — no, especially not in practice.
Somehow, with the football kingdom of Alabama claiming a sixth national championship in the past12 seasons — 52-24 over Ohio State — and with coach Nick Saban claiming a record seventh within the same lifetime, one player shone. Somehow, with Alabamian excellence stretching as usual from the players to the coordinators to probably the water staff and surely back to the coach, one slender marvel of a 175-pound player radiated.
Wide receiver DeVonta Smith did not act alone in the Alabama symphony at Hard Rock Stadium in the College Football Playoff national championship game before a scattered 14,926, but he did epitomize a mastery of detail and standard that helps mark the Saban era. The first receiver to win the Heisman Trophy in 29 years did run his clever, pinpoint routes and flash his frightening speed as the Crimson Tide (13-0) proved confounding to Ohio State (7-1) and to anyone trying to keep stats.
Smith kept lining up on this side of the line or that side, turning up on this side of the field or that side. It began to look like there might be three of him.
By the end of the first quarter, he had caught five passes for 78 yards.
By halftime, he had caught 12 for 215, the numbers ringing like machines in Vegas.
By the end, even while missing almost the entire second half and going to the locker room and returning with a bandage on his right hand, he had the 12 for 215on his way to the record books and the NFL.
“Last year, they said the dynasty was over,” Smith said.“We don’t stop. We just keep reloading.”
As Bama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian called his last mad, maddening designs before making off for the coaching job at Texas, and as quarterback Mac Jones ended a season of dreams with 36for-45 passing for 464 yards and five touchdowns, and as running back Najee Harris continued to look merely formidable, Smith caught three touchdowns by halftime.
He caught a 5-yarder that he carted inside the left pylon after a nifty plot in which he edged toward the backfield early in the play, then floated quickly out to the left to field Jones’ flip. That gave Alabama a 14-7 lead.
He caught another 5-yarder that he carted inside the right pylon after a pre-snap bit of candy during which he motioned right, then motioned left behind the offensive line, then motioned back right to catch the quick pass. That gave Alabama a 28-17 lead, and that’s not to be confused with the beauty just before that, 44 yards to Smith from Jones up the right sideline.
And he caught a 42-yard touchdown on which he lined up left of Jones, then wound up lost to the Buckeyes on the deep right hash mark, blazing behind linebacker Tuf Borland to take a flawless throw from Jones. That gave Alabama a 35-17 halftime lead.
“Unbelievable,” Smith said. “We just finished writing our story. That was the whole thing of us coming back, just finishing the story thatwewanted towrite. Andwe did that.”
If the college football viewer in 2020-21 had to cope with sudden cancellations and postponements here and there and over there and over there, too, and had to cope with sudden lineup changes because of positive coronavirus tests and tracing, at least the sight of some of the most artful passing and catching yet played in college made itself available. It made itself so gleaming Monday night that by halftime, Smith already had surpassed the record for receptions in a championship game in the seven-year College Football Playoff concept, ahead of Hunter Renfrow’s 10 for Clemson in 2017, a mighty effort that did require four quarters.
So the game ratified Smith’s Heisman, and it upheld the Alabama offense as a starship that hovered over all its games, and it furthered a season in which Alabama fans felt barely a palpitation. During 13 wins, the Crimson Tide trailed in just two games — against Mississippi in the first half (before winning 63-48), and against Geor
gia in the first half (and at halftime — before winning 41-24). Other than that, it stayed ahead or tied. The people who followed and cared will live just as long as if they had not.
Beyond that, the events ofMonday night also exemplified a misshapen season in which depth charts kept getting jostled moments before kickoffs. That happened to Ohio State, which had to type out a 13-strong list of unavailable players, including two starters along the defensive line, nose tackle Tommy Togiai and end Tyreke Smith. Not only had those players helped cook up the pressure that inconvenienced quarterback Trevor Lawrence in Ohio State’s 49-28 win over Clemson in the Sugar Bowl of Jan. 1 but full strength remains a good policy when coping with an award-winning Alabama offensive line and the Smith-Harris-Jones (and others) beast it protects. On the plus side, defensive end Zach Harrison did return, having missed theNew Orleans frolics in the Clemson backfield.
And on the other side of that, it seemed hard to imagine anyone pressuring Jones much anyway, given the way he let go of the football with such accurate haste. Often he threw pop passes along the line, and often those went to Smith, including the lid-lifter on the second play. That one went quickly out to the left, where Smith caught it and made a breathtaking passage around three Ohio State defenders in the last little prism of space available on the left side of the field, stopping 22 yards later.
“To me this is the ultimate team,” Saban said. “There is more togetherness on this team than on almost any team we’ve ever had. They’ve had to overcome and to persevere so much through this season, and they have done it magnificent ly .”
Ohio State’s offense did OK and got help early in the second quarter on a fantastic defensive play by blitzing Buckeye Baron Browning, who hugged Jones briefly, popped out the ball, and hopped onto it himself at the Alabama 19 toset up a touchdown. Running back Trey Sermon, with 524 rushing yards in his previous two games, exited after one carry for 2 yards with an injury, but previous starterMaster Teague returned and performed credibly.
Quarterback Justin Fields, so smashing with six touchdown passes in the Sugar Bowl, passed for 194 yards and rushed for 67 while operating with a heartless margin of error. Any stall of any possession seemed lethal given the opposition ready to take the football and dazzle.
“I think there’s a feeling of, if you don’t score you’re going to get behind and then the pressure mounts,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said. “We couldn’t quite keep up.”