Guerry Clegg: Bama does enough to finish the job

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. --Beautiful? Far from it. But it was far from ugly as well.

Even the perfectionist himself, Nick Saban, couldn't quibble too much with mistakes Saturday.

Maybe some other time against some other opponent. But this was Alabama's eighth game without a break, a stretch that included only two non-Power Five Conference opponents. And this opponent just so happened to be Tennessee.

So what mattered most to Saban was that the Crimson Tide dug deep when it mattered the most and found a way to win 19-14.

"Look, I don't like losing," Saban said, "so I'm not real particular how we win."

Not that Saban was blind to the Tide's mistakes. They gave up five sacks and there would have been a few more if not for quarterback Jake Coker somehow turning a few big losses into a gain of a yard or two. The Tide committed seven penalties, several of them just killers at the most inopportune times.

At one point late in the third quarter, after another drive stalled due to a false start penalty and a sack, Saban went over to the bench and exhorted the offense -- first the linemen, then the skill players.

The message: "They're not stopping us. We're stopping ourselves."

"Whether it's penalties, negative plays, missed assignments that led to negative plays or whatever it was, we needed to keep our poise and stay focused and what we needed to do and execute plays. I also told them we needed to play with more energy. I think they responded well.

But the two biggest mistakes of all came on defense and nearly got Alabama beat. The Tide played tight defense almost all afternoon long after surrendering an all-too-easy touchdown drive on Tennessee's second possession of the game. The offense had done just enough. Adam Griffith made his second field goal of the game to put Bama up 13-7 midway through the fourth quarter.

But Tennessee answered with two huge pass plays, Joshua Dobbs finding Josh Smith for 27 yards, then two plays later hitting Josh Malone for 34 yards down to the Bama 12. Jalen Hurd ran around right end for a touchdown to give Tennessee a stunning 14-13 lead with 5:49 to play.

When Coker was sacked on first down, the reality a losing this game started to set in. But that's when the Tide took control. Coker threw a jump ball on the Tennessee sideline to ArDarius Stewart to the Tennessee 44. After Derrick Henry fought hard for four more yards on two carries, Coker went to the other sideline, this time hitting Calvin Ridley for 15 yards to the Volunteers' 25. Henry did the rest of the work ­-- 6 yards over right guard, 5 yards over left guard, then 14 yards around left end for the go-ahead touchdown.

Bryant-Denny Stadium exploded in relief and euphoria, but the game was far from over. The Volunteers still had 2:24 left to drive the field. And it looked like they just might do that as Dobbs connected with Malone for another first down.

But that's when Alabama's defense rose up. After a false start penalty, Dobbs was sacked by Jonathan Allen back to his 21. Then he was sacked again, this time by Ryan Anderson, who knocked the ball loose, and it was recovered by A'Shawn Robinson at the 4.

"I'm sure we have a lot of fans out there that say, 'Why didn't you try to score?' " Saban said. "The only way we could lose the game was to fumble the ball. There was a game about 20 years ago where Baylor had the ball on about the 1 yard line. They were trying to score and the guy fumbled and they picked it up and ran it back for a touchdown and they lost. So sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to win the game."

Alabama has one of the toughest schedules in college football, arguably THE toughest.

Four of the Tide's opponents were ranked at the time they played them -- Wisconsin, Ole Miss, Georgia and Texas A&M. Two others, Arkansas and Tennessee, have been ranked.

But as dominating as the Tide was against Georgia and Texas A&M, this was impressive in its own way.

"We didn't have a lot of energy today, man," Saban said. "We had a lot of dead-legged guys. We tried to back off the last couple of Monday practices knowing this stretch of games we had -- Georgia, Arkansas, Texas A&M and Tennessee -- was going to be really tough, especially after four straight weeks before. I think our players really tried. I think they were mentally and physically tired today. So it says a lot about them that they were able to overcome that and compete in the game and do what they had to do to win."

The Tide gets a much-needed week off before LSU comes to Tuscaloosa, followed by road games at Mississippi State and Auburn with a breather against Charleston Southern in between. If they can get through all of that without another loss, the College Football Selection committee won't dissect this game as one the Tide could have or should have lost.

Instead, all that will matter is the bottom line. They found a way to win. Championship teams do just that.

-- Guerry Clegg is an independent correspondent. You can write to him at sports@ledger-enquirer.com

This story was originally published October 24, 2015 at 11:15 PM with the headline "Guerry Clegg: Bama does enough to finish the job ."