Opinion: Alabama lost to Clemson because nobody saw ‘oil leaking or bald tires’ on defense

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Way back in October, when Alabama was rolling over opponent after opponent and everyone was marveling at the Crimson Tide’s new offensive approach – and especially, the fantastic results – Nick Saban issued a warning.

“Everybody sees the pretty convertible, or the pretty girls driving it,” he said. “But nobody sees the oil leaking or the bald tires.”

Monday night, the machine malfunctioned. After Clemson’s 44-16 victory in the College Football Playoff national championship game, all of those issues he’d worried about were suddenly evident. And so was this:

In the debate over whether this was Saban’s best team, we missed that it was instead one of his most flawed. Buried beneath all that offense, all year long, was a defense that, by Alabama’s lofty standards, at least was pedestrian.

It didn’t matter for most of the season, as Tua Tagovailoa and all of those other talented playmakers routinely shredded opponents. But Monday, against an offense at least as powerful as ’Bama and a quarterback in Trevor Lawrence who is at least as good as Tua, a glaring deficiency was exposed.

Lawrence threw for 347 yards and three touchdowns. Clemson piled up a total of 482. Alabama allowed six plays of at least 20 yards, including TD passes of 62 and 74 yards. With a four-man rush from a highly regarded line, Lawrence was rarely pressured.

Afterward, the Alabama locker room was a mixture of shock and defiance. During postgame interviews, player after player parroted similar lines: They just needed to execute better. Defensive end Raekwon Davis, as one example, started with this: “We just got whupped.” But then he continued:

“Nobody did their job. The pass rush, the run stop, it wasn’t there. … We weren’t prepared. It was just us. It wasn’t anything they were doing. We killed ourselves.”

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