| NEWS Nick Saban humbles Lane Kiffin, reminds him he’s still the boss - AL.com

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It was a humbling of the highest order, the master reminding the former hotshot assistant who still runs the Southeastern Conference.

Before the game a swaggering Lane Kiffin told fans watching at home to get their popcorn ready. He left Tuscaloosa embarrassed and defeated. Even Big Al trolled the man who delights in being the SEC’s biggest troll.

Nick Saban’s Alabama team thoroughly dominated Kiffin’s Ole Miss Rebels in a way few could have expected. Ole Miss added a late touchdown to make the final score, 42-21, a little more respectable but don’t let that score distract you from the fact this was a complete beatdown. What was sold as an offensive shootout was instead Alabama up 35-0 in the third quarter. All week there were questions about how Alabama’s defense would fare against Kiffin’s high-powered offense, and the answer came in loud and triumphantly. The defense looked every bit as worthy of the lofty preseason expectations we all had for it.

Kiffin was overly aggressive in the first half, so desperate to be the former assistant to finally knock off Saban that he coached on tilt. Going for it on 4th-and-1 from Alabama’s 6-yard line is one thing. It’s the kind of aggressiveness you need to have if you’re going to take out big, bad Alabama. Doing it from your own 31-yard line is an entirely different matter, though Kiffin was defiant about the decision afterwards that it was the right thing to do analytically. That might be true but the spread option play call was dead on arrival, and all but ended any comeback chance Ole Miss might have. Alabama made Kiffin pay only six plays later when Bryce Young found Cameron Latu for a touchdown that put the Tide up 21-0 in the second quarter.

“I know it looks bad when it doesn’t work, but you can punt it away and it just takes longer for them to score,” Kiffin said.

Ole Miss couldn’t do much right offensively or defensively against Alabama. Kiffin opted to go with a three-man front defensively and drop as many as eight defenders into coverage at times, so Alabama went old school and pounded the ball down Ole Miss’ throat. Running back Brian Robinson had 36 carries -- more than he said he’s ever had at any level of football -- and powered the Tide’s offensive efforts with 171 rushing yards and four touchdowns. Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral entered the game as a Heisman Trophy favorite, but had his hands full all game against a feisty Alabama defense that played angry and with something to prove. Kiffin was so impressed with outside linebacker Will Anderson he said he should be the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft, though he won’t be eligible for that for at least another year.

In the lead up to the game, it was all about Kiffin versus Saban. It was in some ways an unfair narrative -- Saban himself complained about it -- as neither Saban nor Kiffin can make a single play on the field. It almost always comes down to the players, and Alabama has more good ones than anyone else in the country. That was very evident Saturday in how many Alabama players won their matchups against their Ole Miss counterparts. But at a minimum it was supposed to be a chess match between one of the best offensive minds against one of the best defensive minds.

Ole Miss gave Alabama all it could handle last year to the point Saban publicly wondered afterwards whether Ole Miss had stolen Alabama’s defensive signals. Ole Miss seemed to have the right answer for everything Alabama did, Saban said, though the Tide managed to survive with a 63-48 win. Flash forward a year later, Kiffin referenced those Saban comments and how this time Alabama’s defense had the right response to everything Ole Miss tried to do offensively.

“I thought about it towards the end of the game Coach Saban said a year ago he felt like afterwards every call was the right call we had and everything went our way,” Kiffin said. “I felt like that today for them defensively. We go with a speed option on fourth down and No. 10 (Henry To’oTo’) makes a great play and catches Ealy, and Ealy tries to cut back for some reason.”

Watching Saban’s Alabama team meticulously pick apart Ole Miss in every facet Saturday night, it made one wonder whether last year was the closest Kiffin will ever get to beating Saban. As the late, great Michael K. Williams said in The Wire, “If you come at the king, you best not miss.” Kiffin admitted to Saban after the 2020 game he used every single thing he knew would bother his former boss. He emptied the notebook of the things he wrote down during three years in Tuscaloosa that Saban had said were a problem for him to defend and he “did every one of them,” Saban told ESPN.

Kiffin had a great shot at unseating the king of college football last season, and he missed. He had no shot this time.

Saban improved to 24-0 against his former assistants and will almost certainly improve to 25-0 against Jimbo Fisher’s offensively challenged Texas A&M team. Kiffin can learn from the humbling he received from his former boss and work to improve as a head coach to have a better shot at winning next time. Or he can keep tweeting about “rat poison” and trying to needle Saban every chance he gets.

Saban is still the king of college football for a reason. He reminded Kiffin Saturday just how difficult it’ll ever be to knock him off his throne.
 

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Our popcorn was ready, buttered and salted.

Our hopes were high, our expectations through the roof.

We told ourselves this was it, that Alabama finally faced a real challenger to its SEC Western Division dominance, that coach Nick Saban finally had a threat to his remarkable streak of never losing, in 23 tries, to a former assistant coach.

Lane Kiffin knew Saban’s weaknesses (remember last year’s 63–48 shootout in Oxford?). He knows what irks the man, what frazzles his usually stingy defense. Lane has the solution for the problem that has vexed all of college football for a decade now, right? He’s got the cure for the Alabama ailment, the potion for a miraculous upset.

He’s got a Heisman Trophy candidate of a quarterback, a vastly improved defense, a creative offensive mind and, to be frank, the cojones to beat the master.

The theater was readied. The popcorn popped. The soda cup filled. The lights lowered.

And then, right before our eyes, from high within the press box at Bryant-Denny Stadium, the screen flickered to life.

What a dud.

Two thumbs down, way down. A stinker billed to be a blockbuster. A yawner hyped as a thriller.

The 2021 edition of Alabama–Ole Miss will be remembered more for its pregame ballyhooing than its true theater experience. Take for instance Kiffin’s on-field interview seconds before kickoff, when he quipped to CBS cameras, “Get your popcorn ready,” before slinging his headset toward the production crew.

The coach served up some popcorn all right—stale, burnt and chewy.

His team failed to convert three of a whopping five fourth down attempts in the first half, three from his own territory—eccentric decisions that reeked of desperation and a lack of trust in his defense.

Maybe he was right. Bama ran for 210 yards, averaging over four yards a run. Ole Miss’s defense is a 3-2-6 scheme designed to stop the pass-happy spread that often drops eight defenders into coverage, Saban says. There was a pretty simple solution to that: run the dang ball.

“It felt like classic Alabama football, pound it,” said running back Brian Robinson Jr.

The Tide gashed the Rebels, scored the first 35 points of the game and led 42–7 before a pair of Ole Miss garbage time scores.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Or maybe it was?

This seems to happen every year or two. A Saban assistant fields a pesky upstart that is deemed as a challenger to the game’s greatest coach before the greatest coach proves his greatness.

Ask Kirby Smart and Jimbo Fisher. Ask Derek Dooley and Will Muschamp. Saban’s former assistants are now 0–24 against him.

However, this one feels different. Kiffin and Saban are notorious opposites. Their three-year marriage ended in a fiery blaze in 2016. Ever since, Kiffin has found ways to subtly skewer Saban, both on social media and during interviews. In between glowing compliments, he takes cracks at his old boss.

“You don’t poke the bear,” says one former Saban assistant. “Just don’t poke the bear.”

The bear doesn’t poke back. It bites.

If it wasn’t Bryce Young scrambling for an open receiver (21 of 27 for 241 yards), it was Robinson racing through gaping holes or pushing piles of Rebels (36 rushes for 171 yards). If it wasn’t a Will Anderson tackle for loss (he had 2.5 of them), it was a Henry To’oTo’o tackle (10 for the game).

And if it wasn’t an Ole Miss fourth-down attempt, it was one from the Tide. In fact, a situation that unfolded late in the second quarter really summed up the day here. From his own 31-yard line, Kiffin went for it on fourth-and-1. To’oTo’o stuffed a rush, Alabama took over and, five plays later, Saban himself attempted a fourth down from the 1-yard line on a goal-to-go situation. The Tide scored a touchdown.

Kiffin put his defense into difficult circumstances, to say the least. After the game, he described the fourth-down attempts as analytical decisions. He talked of “scared money” and Blackjack tables.

"I'm sure I got killed on going for it on fourth down,” he said. “That's analytics. When it doesn't work when you follow the book, it doesn't look good.”

It’s unclear from which book he’s reading (what book suggests going for it in your own 31?)

Let’s scan through those first-half fourth-down attempts:

• Fourth and 3 from UA 35: converted
• Fourth and 3 from UA 18: converted
• Fourth and 1 from UA 6: failed
• Fourth and 2 from OM 47: failed
• Fourth and 1 from OM 31: failed

Said Kiffin of the fourth downs: “You can punt it away and it just takes longer for them to score.”

The first three of those fourth-down attempts came on Ole Miss’s 16-play, 59-yard opening drive—one that ended in a turnover on downs at the Alabama 6 and gave us the only real positive flashes of the Rebels' offense.

The thrilling opening scene further heightened expectations for this Hollywood script. But alas, it was all downhill from there. In fact, Mississippi's next four drives produced 15 snaps and 31 yards. The Rebels' previous Heisman hopeful of a quarterback, Matt Corral, finished the game with as many fumbles (one) as he had touchdown passes, and he failed to pass for at least 280 yards for the first time this season (he had 213 Saturday).

Corral had little time to throw.

“We got dominated up front,” Kiffin deadpanned.

Alabama’s romping victory fell in line with the theme of college football’s first Saturday in October: Order has been restored.

Arkansas and Ole Miss, undefeated upstarts, were crushed by what seems to be the nation’s two most elite teams, Georgia and Alabama. Ohio State found itself finally, crushing Rutgers, and Iowa rolled over undefeated Maryland. Oklahoma’s offense found the spark against Kansas State, and the Pac-12, of course, shot itself out of playoff contention (down went Oregon).

For the most part—Notre Dame aside—the College Football Playoff bluebloods roared to life for the first time in a single weekend this year.

Of course, Alabama has been roaring for quite some time. Saban and his Tide made this such a dud. So much for that thriller. So long to that popcorn.

Toward the end of the game, in fact, Big Al, the Tide’s elephant mascot, trolled Kiffin’s words with a wardrobe addition. He emerged from the tunnel with an oversized bucket hanging from his neck.

It was full of popcorn.
 
Regardless of what each coach said about it being about the players, only CNS meant it. I saw a half dozen quick sound bites of Kiffin and before the popcorn comment I told my wife that Kiffin’s stress is through the roof. JMO…it was about the coaches to Kiffin because by the popcorn comment you could see Saban was playing cards with Aunt Katie in his head.
 
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