Alabama's Machine-like Defense Is Swallowing College Football, and Also the Sun

Let us begin with the latest salvo in the ongoing referendum on Nick Saban's humanity, because as soon as one of Saban's own players ran into him during last weekend's win over Mississippi State, and as soon as we noticed the cut forming on the coach's cheek, the jokes came tumbling across the transom from near and far: Nick Saban bleeds?

Here we are again, ten games into yet another season when the Alabama dynasty appeared to be on the verge of collapse after an early loss to Ole Miss. Here we are again, in the midst of yet another November where the Crimson Tide appear to be the best college football team in America. If this feels familiar, it's because at some point in every one of the past seven seasons, Alabama has been favored to win the national championship. It has a near-robotic track record of success, and it is precisely that machine-like aura that makes Alabama the best program in the country.

That's the thing about Alabama, and that's the thing about a Saban-coached team: when the Crimson Tide are at their best, there is an almost frigid inhumanity to the way they win football games. Early in the year, when the Tide were struggling to settle on a quarterback, when they were vulnerable in the secondary, they were far more interesting to watch. They've resorted to their old ways the past few weeks, by running the ball and playing the sort of near-impenetrable defense that makes you wonder if this might be the best defense Saban has ever had. Alabama is once again relentlessly efficient, kind of dull, and utterly brilliant; Alabama managed to go up against the most electric running back in college football in perhaps the past decade, LSU's Leonard Fournette, and render him uninteresting.

At some level, this is to be expected. Alabama recruits the best players in the country every year; Alabama is always going to be a challenge on defense merely because of the talent the Tide have stacked up on that side of the ball. But something remarkable is unfolding right now, because for the past few weeks Alabama's defense has essentially reached a zenith. The Tide didn't just limit Leonard Fournette to 31 yards on 19 carries; they did it without even bothering to put extra men in the box to stop the run, because they didn't have to. Last week, the Tide held Mississippi State to 89 yards on 42 rushes, and they limited Bulldog quarterback Dak Prescott to 14 yards on 26 carries. This list of opposing quarterbacks' unadjusted ratings against Alabama is astounding in its heartless efficiency, and it raises the legitimate question of whether this might be the apex of the Saban era at Alabama, if not the historical apex of defensive football at Alabama, which feels heretical to even suggest.

I realize this is a premature notion. I realize that Alabama, not having won a national title since 2012 and having lost two straight postseason games, has to prove itself once more. Perhaps a team with a month to prepare heading into the College Football Playoff—or perhaps a team like Florida, in the SEC Championship game—can find a way to decipher this Alabama front, the way Oklahoma and Ohio State did in the past two Sugar Bowls. It's looking increasingly difficult, however, because this is precisely the kind of team that Saban is always looking to build, a team with so much NFL-ready talent, particularly in the front seven, that the Tide can afford to play somewhat conservatively, to keep seven men in the box and rush four on passing downs, and still get things done. They win by playing straight-ahead football. I'm not sure how anyone overcomes that level of pure competence.

Of course, even if the Tide do wind up winning the national championship this season, this team may not wind up ranking statistically among the greatest Alabama defenses of all time. Part of that it is a byproduct of the era in which this team plays: it is impossible, from week to week, to limit teams offensively the way some of those Bear Bryant squads did in the 70s and 80s, merely because the game has changed so much. But to dominate the way Alabama has in the past few weeks, especially in the run game, against solid SEC competition—to play with such gusto against LSU and Mississippi State that both games were essentially over as soon as they began—is enough to at least raise the question.

Every time this happens, every time Alabama elevates itself to this machine-like level of competency, the question also arises about how long this dynasty can possibly last. Already, the perennial rumors (specious or not) have begun to materialize about Saban fleeing Tuscaloosa for one last shot at redemption in the NFL. Add to that the question of whether Saban might lose both his offensive coordinator, Lane Kiffin, and his defensive coordinator, Kirby Smart, to head-coaching positions, and you can't help but wonder how many more years Alabama will continue to wedge its way into the national conversation just when we think they're about to fall out of it. This is already one of the most extraordinary runs of success in college football history, and the crazy thing about it is that Alabama just keeps finding ways to get even better.