When it was all said and done, the confetti fell on Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide in Atlanta once again.
Alabama, under Saban’s tutelage, won its 10th SEC Championship game since the game’s inception in 1992 against Kirby Smart’s then-No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs. And it did so as underdogs, a role seldom occupied by a Saban-coached program in recent years.
Among all of the great wins over Georgia in recent memory — from the Blackout in 2008 to second-and-26 in the 2018 CFP national championship — this one will go down as the best, and I can give you reasons.
While many recent matchups against the Bulldogs could be chosen as instant classics, this one takes the cake as the greatest. The Tide hadn’t gone into a game this big as an underdog since being a one-point dog to UGA in 2015. But there were media pundits giving Alabama a premature burial and obituary pregame.
Just a handful of experts picked the Crimson Tide to win, but that included all of us on staff here at Roll Tide Wire.
Back to back SEC Champs!🏆🏆 pic.twitter.com/H5h8HrLGMk
— Alabama Athletics (@UA_Athletics) December 5, 2021
Georgia fans spent a large majority of the week leading up to the game barking reasons why the Tide couldn’t win and why this was finally the year Kirby Smart exacted revenge for all three (now four) of Saban’s transgressions against him. This is the main ingredient of the satisfaction many of us experienced when the final whistle sounded.
— Freezing Cold Takes (@OldTakesExposed) December 5, 2021
These last couple of weeks were enlightening. We learned that Georgia never learns who daddy is, Nick Saban is still the king of college football and Alabama remains the force to be reckoned with at this level of the sport.
If it were to come down to a rematch in the 2022 CFP national championship, I foresee Georgia supporters getting the same mindset again, claiming victory prior to kickoff, just to be burned again.
That daunting and prolific UGA defense we heard Bulldogs fans tout before the game was picked apart by Bryce Young and a talented corps of wide receivers that didn’t even include John Metchie III after the second quarter.
If you’re reading this and still haven’t figured out why I believe this is the best win over Georgia in recent Alabama history, it’s in part because of the tears that rolled postgame when that familiar confetti rained down on the Crimson Tide once again.
Here’s to one of the sweetest Rammer Jammers ever recited.
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