Inside the night Alabama football’s hopes withered in Oklahoma

The Oklahoma fan wearing a baseball cap backwards was uninterested in compassion as Alabama football players slowly walked toward their team bus in the bowels of Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.

“Where’s Nick Saban?” He shouted down at the Crimson Tide players and coaches as they each picked up a plastic bag of food and boarded their ride to the airport.

Back on the field, fans lingered. They’d rushed the playing surface twice, once with 28 seconds remaining on the clock, one of them taking a running start to shove an Alabama staffer in the back before officials and security hustled the Sooner faithful off the field and re-raised the goalposts for one last snap.

After that, they headed back toward midfield. Some of the OU fans tried to run up on Alabama players, taunting the Tide, cell phones in hand, as police and yellow jackets tried their best to get the losing side off the field safely.

It was the first time OU fans had rushed the field in Norman since 2000. It continued the streak of opposing fans storming after beating Alabama that dates back to 2010, when LSU was the last crowd not to enter the field.

“Of course, when you play Alabama, you want to be at your best, especially here at home,” Crimson Tide quarterback Jalen Milroe said afterward.

Milroe was right, at least based on the conventional wisdom college football has lived by since Saban’s first UA title in 2009. But with Alabama’s third loss of the 2024 season, the first time that’s happened since 2010, it might be time to start doubting that wisdom.

With Alabama’s College Football Playoff dreams nearly dead, the field rush streak is in jeopardy. If the current Crimson Tide isn’t going to live up to the standard Saban’s teams set, beating the team wearing the script A logo eventually won’t be that exciting.

‘A bulletproof plan’

Brent Venables implied his staff had outwitted Kalen DeBoer’s Alabama side. He was probably right.

The Sooner defense held Milroe to seven rushing yards. Whatever adjustments the UA coaching staff might have made, they didn’t work, and the Tide scored just three points in the loss.

“There was a little bit of deception, and the players executed at an incredibly high level,” Venables said. “The staff did a fantastic job of putting together a bulletproof plan and having answers. There’s a level of anticipation. ‘Hey, when we show this, they’re going to do that. When we do this, here would be their counter.’”

Oklahoma set the tone on Alabama’s first play. Milroe went up the middle, looking for the space that allowed him to torch the LSU defense two weeks prior, but found none of it.

Sooner linebacker Danny Stutsman put Milroe on the ground for a short gain. The redshirt junior quarterback never got going.

He threw three interceptions, including the pick six that suffocated his team’s comeback attempt.

“Everyone’s saying he’s a huge duty, it’s hard to get him down,” Stutsman said afterward, speaking to reporters after blasting “Sweet Home Alabama” with his teammates in the locker room. “But you’re gonna go out there and start the game off like that, let them know he’s just another player.”

Oklahoma mostly followed the same script Vanderbilt did early in the season. The Crimson Tide had the ball 10 times, and the Sooners blew the Tide out in time of possession, holding the ball for 34:11.

Perhaps most embarrassingly, it was Jackson Arnold who Kane Wommack’s Alabama defense had no answer for on the ground. The quarterback could barely hold onto his starting job for the Sooners this season, and was benched for freshman Michael Hawkins Jr. briefly before regaining the reins.

Arnold rushed for 131 yards on 25 carries. After the game, he joked that he was sore, but more from fans hanging off of him during the field rush than anything the Alabama defense hit him with.

“Being able to out-physical a team with a history like Alabama, obviously it’s a great feeling,” Arnold said. “All week we were talking about just being physical and inflicting our pain on others, and I thought that’s what we did tonight.”

‘We’re going to finish’

Alabama used to play its annual FCS game the week before the Iron Bowl. Thanks to the SEC’s 2024 scheduled with the addition of Oklahoma and Texas, those days are gone.

Instead, UA comes in fresh off its worst performance of the season. Meanwhile, Auburn upset Texas A&M in four overtimes on Saturday, and will be playing for bowl eligibility in Tuscaloosa.

The Tigers haven’t won at Bryant-Denny Stadium since Cam Newton led them to victory in 2010. But Saban is gone, the Crimson Tide is reeling and Hugh Freeze has a propensity to win games his team has no business competing in, often to the detriment of other matchups he overlooks.

Technically Alabama can still get into the playoffs. It’ll be difficult even if it beats Auburn by 100 points, but the slimmest of chances is still there.

But, more than likely, the Oklahoma loss crushed any chance the Tide had of seeing the first 12-team field. For some fans, that makes DeBoer’s first season in charge a failure already, especially given two of the three losses so far came against teams UA should have beaten easily on paper.

Alabama isn’t the Alabama of old anymore. Whether DeBoer can build something new is still yet to be seen.

He’ll have to start work in the game that defines the legacies of coaches at both schools.