Written by Tyler Pastorius
As many expected, Alabama and Nick Saban prevail once again claiming a spot in the National Championship game. Yet to lose a game, Alabama hopes to keep things rolling against Clemson on January 7th in Santa Clara.
Early on, there was not much of a fight out of Oklahoma and head coach Lincoln Riley was seen during many commercial breaks trying to rile up his team. Through the first quarter, the score was in favor of Alabama, 21-0. At one point in the first quarter, there was a total yard comparison of 191 yards for Alabama to Oklahoma’s 0.
However, through the second and third quarter, Oklahoma was looking to get back into striking distance, putting up 20 points in comparison as Alabama scored 10. But with such a dominant performance in the first quarter, it was hard for Kyler Murray and the rest of the Sooners to really gain a good amount of traction to impact the game heavily.
Tua Tagovailoa torched the Sooners’ with 318 passing yards and four touchdowns (no interceptions). Tua even completed all of his first nine passes for 184 yards alone. After the game, he shared a moment with Murray on the field, and mentions that it was nothing but love. “I mean, me and Kyler just told each other, great game. He said I love you, I told him I love him, too. Aside from that, I just told him, great season. He had a great season. He told me I had a great game, and go win it all. But when you look at it, we’re both competitors. I think he’s done a tremendous job with running the offense. Lincoln Riley has done a tremendous job, as well.”
Josh Jacobs was the leading rusher for Alabama who put up 98 yards on 15 carries. He was literally running through people, in which some occasions it would take three to four defenders from Oklahoma to bring him down. Overall, the huge holes within Oklahoma’s defense were exploited tonight and what was visibly shown was the caliber of offense that Alabama has.
Oklahoma may not have made the rally that they wanted to do, but Kyler Murray was trying to put the team on his back as much as possible. Murray threw for 308 yards, two touchdowns, 109 rushing yards, and one rushing touchdown. However, his offensive line wasn’t able to keep up during the rally against the pressure Nick Saban and his coaching staff was drawing up. With no time to really perform early on in the game, it left Murray in a spot where he and the rest of the Sooners had to dig themselves out of.
“Well, it was a great win for our team,” mentions Saban after the game. “Really proud of these guys for the way they’ve competed all season long. Oklahoma is a really, really good team, very explosive team on offense. I thought we did a great job of controlling the game today the way our offense played.”
For Alabama, this was the game they wanted to have. The last two games for the Crimson Tide have been a test, with the close call against Georgia and now Oklahoma with their late surge. With Clemson up next for the National Championship, the Crimson Tide will look to head into California and bring home a second straight title to Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
