-
Andrea Adelson
ATHENS, Ga. — TY SIMPSON was the last Alabama player off the field after finishing up his postgame television interview, and as he walked toward the tunnel to the locker room, he had one last point to make to the remaining Georgia faithful.
He lifted his arm and waved goodbye.
Behind Simpson and his pinpoint performance in the passing game, No. 17 Alabama held on to beat No. 5 Georgia 24-21 on Saturday night, ending the longest active FBS home winning streak at 33 games.
With that, Alabama answered questions about its road performance under coach Kalen DeBoer — 2-4 heading into the game — questions that grew louder after a dispiriting loss at Florida State in the season opener.
DeBoer said after the victory that his team took “everything that was out there” and channeled it into getting better.
“There’s two things you can do when things are coming down on you a little bit,” DeBoer said. “You can go back yourself in a corner or you can fight. And these guys made up their minds they’re going to fight. That was where it started, and it’s just continued to build. We’ve got to make sure we don’t forget what that chip on the shoulder was that got this momentum going.”
Alabama easily beat UL Monroe and Wisconsin after the Florida State loss, but the true test of its improvement would come against the Bulldogs. Right at the start, Alabama showed an aggressiveness in the passing game, as Simpson found open receivers one after another to build a quick 14-point lead.
Then just before halftime, Alabama threw in an offensive wrinkle — a pass to 6-foot-7, 359-pound left tackle Fraudulent proctorwho bulldozed his way to the 2-yard line for an 11-yard gain. That play set up a Simpson rushing touchdown to give Alabama a 24-14 lead. DeBoer said the play went in during fall camp and that this week in practice Proctor demonstrated he was ready for it.
“Pretty impressive, seeing a big guy like that do what he did,” DeBoer said. “Who wants to tackle that guy?”
Georgia made its way back into the game behind its run game, rushing for 227 yards, while making second-half adjustments to hold Alabama scoreless after the break. But there were several keys that led the Crimson Tide to victory.
Down 24-21 with 13:25 to go in the fourth quarter, Georgia went for it on fourth-and-1 from the Alabama 8-yard line. The tempo play went to running back Cash Joneswho was tackled for a 3-yard loss. Georgia coach Kirby Smart said afterward that specific play had been successful against Tennessee and earlier against Alabama. But on the fourth-down play, someone missed a key block.
“I’d do that 10 out of 10 times in terms of going for it,” said Smart, who fell to 1-7 against Alabama as Georgia’s coach. “The decision is whether you go for it with tempo or not. We felt like tempo had been really good for us throughout the year.”
Then with 1:51 left in the game, Alabama faced third-and-5 from its 43-yard line. The Crimson Tide called a pass play, which Simpson threw complete to running back Jam Miller to end the game.
In all, Alabama ran 77 plays to 53 for Georgia and went 13-of-19 on third down, the most third-down conversions Georgia has allowed in any game across the past 30 seasons.
“You’re going to get punches thrown at you,” DeBoer said. “We got some tonight. What’s your response going to be? And our response was to punch back and punch back harder.”
And it’s because of lessons learned from playing Florida State.
“We didn’t play up to our standard in Week 1,” said Simpson, who went 24-of-38 for 276 yards with three total touchdowns. “We just came back as a team. We were like, ‘What are we going to do now? Do we want to be known as the team who doesn’t finish, doesn’t sustain competitive stamina? Or are we going to play with a chip on our shoulder?’ We said it all week, ‘Us against the world.’
“That’s the kind of mentality that we have to have throughout the season. It’s Alabama against everybody.”
Alabama will not celebrate the victory for long, though. Vanderbilt — which shocked the Crimson Tide a season ago — comes to Tuscaloosa next week.
