Bama failed the process, won anyway

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Blake Sims, the senior quarterback who has surprised everyone outside of the Alabama program and no one inside it, threw for 445 yards and four touchdowns, and his head coach praised that.

But Alabama coughed up the ball four times and allowed a team with a listless offense to score three touchdowns. The Crimson Tide committed 11 penalties for 80 yards, an uncharacteristic display of mistakes. That's why a game that had no business being close remained in doubt late into the third quarter, before Alabama pulled away to a 42-21 victory at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

In other words, people, Alabama won the game but lost "the process."

The process is shorthand for Saban's coaching. It combines outlandish physical talent with a watchmaker's precision. The Crimson Tide had a lot of the former and not enough of the latter, which led to Saban debating himself throughout his postgame press conference.

"Obviously, everybody that watched the game could tell that there were some things that we did extremely well and some things were pretty sloppy," Saban said.

Saban regards sloppiness as the devil's playground, somewhere between a character deficiency and leprosy. Particularly in the first half, Alabama couldn't have looked less like a Saban-coached team if it had come out in the single-wing. Or leather helmets. Or orange and blue.

"I felt we could have had 900 yards," Alabama offensive tackle Austin Shepherd said. "Just minor things that we've got to fix, uncharacteristic things of us."

Take the penalties. Alabama had three false starts and two snap infractions.

"All of it is game management and execution." Saban said, "We're second-and-1 at the 1, and the quarterback calls the wrong cadence. Everybody might think that, 'Hey, the offensive line messed up.' That's the kind of stuff that we have to be consistent and trust in and believe in and do the right way. It's attention to detail. We've had far too many of those this year, and we've got to get it corrected."

Saban stopped and moved to the other podium in his internal debate.

"But there's also been a tremendous amount of production offensively this year ..."

Saban hired Lane Kiffin because he believed in the controversial coach's ability to run an offense. On Alabama's first play from scrimmage at the Tide's 13-yard line, Kiffin shifted tailback Kenyan Drake to wide receiver and laid the bait out there as softly as if he were standing in the Black Warrior River with a fly rod. Linebacker Antonio Morrison moved to cover Drake, who put a double move on Morrison and took off down the right sideline. Sims hit Drake in stride near midfield, and just like that, Alabama had an 87-yard touchdown pass.

On Alabama's next play from scrimmage, Florida defensive back Marcus Maye stripped Drake of the ball and corner Vernon Hargreaves recovered at the Tide 31. The Gators tied the game three plays later.

That's pretty much how the first half went. Sims threw another first-play-of-the-drive touchdown, a 79-yarder to Amari Cooper. He finished the first quarter with 272 passing yards, a career high. Yet that touchdown tied the game because Florida safety Keanu Neal had returned receiver DeAndrew White's fumble 49 yards for a touchdown a play earlier.

In the Tide's first six possessions, they had one missed field goal, two one-play scoring "drives" and three turnovers.

"We gave them everything that they got, as far as them scoring," said Cooper, who had 201 yards and three touchdowns, both career highs, on 10 catches. Cooper broke a 47-year-old record and became the program's career leader with 20 touchdown catches.

Alabama looked more like a Saban-coached team in the second half, even after Sims fumbled early in the third quarter to set up the Gators' final score. With the score 21-21, Alabama finally shook loose its running game. Alabama kept the ball on the ground for 33 of its last 43 offensive snaps, and a tired Florida defense surrendered.

It was a dispiriting loss for the Gators. The team began the year with renewed hope for redshirt quarterback Jeff Driskel, who completed 9 of 28 passes for 93 yards and two interceptions, but Florida looked more like the team went 4-8 the past year than the 11-win team of the year before. Life won't be any easier for head coach Will Muschamp, even after his former boss, Saban, declined to kick a 30-yard field goal late in the game. On fourth-and-goal from the Gator 13, Saban ran the ball into the line.

It wasn't a dispiriting win for Alabama -- just an unusual one. The Tide have a bye week coming up, which means the players will hear about their mistakes for much longer than they would if they had a game next Saturday. The bye week comes at an opportune time for Sims, who suffered a bruised AC joint in his right shoulder. Cooper has played for Saban for three years, so he knows what the team is in store for during the coming bye week.

"It will be we made a lot of mistakes," Cooper said, "but we came out, and we forgot about it. We played the next play. We executed. We'll harp on ball security in practice. We usually do."

Alabama came into the game with questions about whether it would look like the team with incredible talent or the team that hasn't quite jelled. The answer was yes.