Injuries Give Alabama A Chance to Show A Total Championship Team
By Larry Burton
It’s funny that even on vacation on a tiny island off the coast of Southern Venezuela you can’t escape Alabama football or Alabama fans, but what’s more, you can’t escape the fact that people, who may not like Alabama’s run of championships, respect what a champion they have been.
We met a couple at our resort from North Carolina, he went to Troy, she went to Auburn and they have a child at Auburn now. Dwane said what impresses him most about Alabama is the seamless integration of first, second and third string players which come in and out but overall production on both sides of the ball doesn’t seem to matter.
He remarked that when HaHa Clinton-Dix went out he expected it to hurt us and said he was surprised when the defensive numbers actually got better.
He’s noticed over the years when Alabama loses a star, the sub is always more than willing and more than able to not only just fill in, but carry the load to the same standard as the one he replaces. He asked me if Chad Lindsay was actually better than Ryan Kelly?
Now while I was stunned that someone who professed to be a fan of another school followed Alabama so closely and even knew the names of players, I was struck when he said, “That’s a true championship team, not a squad with champions on it.”
I asked my new friend Dwayne from North Carolina if he’d heard that starting safety and “coach on the field” Vinnie Sunseri was gone for the season with an injury and his reply was, “No, but I’m sure there’s someone who will step up and fill that job just fine. They always do.”
And therein lies the difference between Alabama and other teams at the upper echelon. Alabama is not a team with a lot of champions on it. They are a championship team.
In years of interviewing players from all the championship teams from the Saban era is a comment that always comes to mind when players talk about such things. They call them “Opportunities”. Each player has said that there comes a time when you have to make the most of your opportunities when they come, to be ready mentally and physically for that opportunity.
A great example was Jalston Fowler from two years ago when he ran wild in a game where it was his turn to be the “Man” in the backfield due to injuries. “Every man on this team knows that you’re going to have opportunities where the team needs you to step up. This is something we work on every day all year long. We may not know when our opportunities may come, but we all are ready to step up and make the most of them when they come. That is just Alabama football”, Fowler said with a big grin.
Handed the injuries from the Tennessee team, Georgia is simply nowhere near the same team. Other teams can lose one player and be hamstrung for the rest of the season. Not Alabama.
While it’s true that an AJ McCarron injury would hurt Alabama, it may only hurt production and scoring, but not overall results. While some may scoff at such a statement, remember that when McCarron took over for a championship winning quarterback, Greg McElroy, he was a raw rookie with less playing time than current backup quarterback Blake Sims has had.
The mentality of Alabama’s team has always been team first. Perhaps that’s why they’ve only had one Heisman Trophy winner despite more national championships than any other school in recent history.
Texas A&M is a team built around a few players, other teams are very similar, Alabama is a group of young men built around a philosophy of being a championship team, not being a star player. And the big Crimson ball just keeps on rolling…
Larry is an award winning writer whose work has appeared in almost every college football venue. Now he primarily writes for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. https://twitter.com/LBSportswriter
