Tide roll over Tigers with Saban at home
Jones, Smith lead team to Iron Bowl victory as coach watches from afar.
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Once the Iron Bowl kicked off, Nick Saban was just another passionate, heavily invested fan who was powerless to help his team win. His team still won — big. Mac Jones passed for 302 yards and a career-high five touchdowns, highlighted by two long ones to DeVonta Smith, and No. 1 Alabama rolled over rival No. 22 Auburn 42-13 on Saturday without Saban.
The Crimson Tide (8-0, No. 1 playoff rankings) continued a dominating march through a schedule of allSoutheastern Conference games even minus its sixtime national champion coach on the sideline.
Saban tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday and watched the game feed from home, witnessing the usual array of big plays with offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian running the show.
Saban said his staff “did a marvelous job.”
“Sark did a nice job of
managing things, and I sat here and felt a little helpless,“he said in a postgame videoconference from his home. “I could see things and yell at things and listen to [wife] Miss Terry yell downstairs. It’s a little different. It still feels good to win.”
The result was much of the same against the Tigers (5-3), who suffered the second-most lopsided loss of Gus Malzahn’s coaching tenure. The only bigger margin was Alabama’s 52-21 win in the 2018 Iron Bowl.
“They’re a very, very talented team,” Malzahn said. “We knew that. Still we came in here with the mind-set that we wanted to win the game. To beat a team like
that on the road, you’ve got to make plays. We didn’t do that. We didn’t play our best. It’s obvious.”
Alabama started a string of three straight touchdowns with Jones’s 66-yard touchdown to Smith, who was streaking by himself downfield after Auburn defenders bit on a double move. He later added a 58yard catch and run on a quick slant, sprinting away from the Tigers.
Smith had seven catches for 171 yards. Najee Harris ran for 96 yards, including a 39-yard touchdown, and John Metchie III caught a pair of scoring passes.
Bo Nix passed for 227 yards for the Tigers.