A month ago, Alabama played at Bryant-Denny Stadium. Three weeks ago, that changed to Saban Field at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Now you can add another name: the Hollywood Bowl.
True freshman WR Ryan “Hollywood” Williams and QB Jalen Milroe combined to put on a show and ultimately come back to beat a Georgia team that the Crimson Tide had led at one time 28-0, a lead that seemed insurmountable at the time. But Georgia hasn’t become one of the best teams in college football by laying down and accepting its fate; the Bulldogs battled back, ultimately went up 34-33 and suddenly, Kalen DeBoer’s first truly big game as Alabama’s head coach seemed poised to become his first bitter disappointment.
And then, “The Play” happened.
After Georgia had scored on a one-play drive, a 67-yard pass from Carson Beck to Dillon Bell, Alabama answered on the next snap from scrimmage with a 75-yard pass from Milroe to Williams, and the resulting explosion from the crowd blew the top off the stadium. Alabama went back up 41-34 after a two-point conversion from Milroe to Germie Bernard, then held on to a win as Alabama’s other No. 2, freshman CB Zabien Brown, sealed the win with an interception of Beck in the end zone.
Result: Kirby Smart has to be wondering if he was just born too late, or too early. The name atop the Bama organizational chart may have changed, but this is still a crimson buzzsaw and Georgia ran face-first into it.
This was a game that utterly defies explanation or even description. Alabama jumping out to a 28-0 lead, leading 30-7 at halftime, but having to pull a rabbit out of the hat to walk off with the victory. Georgia’s Beck turning the ball over four times. Three offensive pass interference penalties on the same team in the same game; someone with a lot more time on their hands will have to tell you whether that’s ever happened before. And then there was Williams, who earlier in the game made a juggling catch to set up a Graham Nicholson field goal on a play that looked straight out of Johnny Manziel’s repertoire. It was a play that couldn’t be topped – until Williams topped it himself with a spinning 75-yard reception to ice the game.
This ended up being one of those games that fans wind up talking about 30 years after the fact, a sort of “where-were-you-when” exercise. The fact the capping play was made by a kid so young that he won’t be able to legally buy a lottery ticket or an alcoholic beverage on the day he’s drafted into the NFL is one of those things that only seems to happen to programs like this one, where it becomes but another chapter in a story so heroic and grand that hobbits should be involved somehow.
In the process Saturday, Jalen Milroe went shooting up to the top of the Heisman Trophy watchlist, and when the dust settles, his closest competition at the moment might be his own wide receiver. Milroe had been derided for a lack of midrange passing game in 2024, but he opened with 11 straight completions in this game and finished the day completing almost 82 percent of his passes and accounting for 491 yards of total offense.
And oh, there’s that Kalen DeBoer guy. Alabama’s new head coach showed himself to be cut from a different cloth than most of Alabama’s recent coaches, particularly in his aggressiveness offensively. We’ll discuss it a bit in the next section, but Bama was able to keep Georgia off-kilter for most of the day, and only when Alabama dialed back the aggressiveness in the second half did it get itself into trouble. Anyone worrying how DeBoer’s philosophies might fit in with the rest of the SEC can probably breathe easier now.
The next step for Alabama will be to prove it can manage the weekly ebb and flow of emotions as the SEC schedule cranks up in earnest. There’s a good chance Alabama will play Georgia again, and the two teams could wind up facing off three times before all is said and done. But they’re not likely to give us a barn-burner like the one we got Saturday night in Tuscaloosa.
Here’s the Five-Point Breakdown for Alabama-Georgia:
1. This was Jalen Milroe’s best game of his career and showed what is possible under DeBoer’s tutelage. Milroe was never rattled in this game, seemed to see the field better than he ever has and made enough plays with his legs that Georgia couldn’t feel comfortable playing tighter coverages and devoting extra players to the third level of the defense. In his postgame press conference, Georgia head coach Kirby Smart touched on the difficulties of defending Milroe when Milroe is “on,” and he was certainly that on Saturday. Milroe hit a couple of his signature downfield shots, but where he showed the most growth was on blitz recognition and getting the ball out quickly, which in large part was why Alabama’s tight ends combined for 7 catches. If Milroe continues to progress like this, no one will want to face him late in the year – as if anyone wants to face him now.
2. OL was solid in pass protection, but running game was uneven. Milroe was never sacked in this game and only a couple of times needed to hit the escape hatch. The move of Elijah Prichett into the starting role at right tackle, along with the return of Kadyn Proctor at left tackle, has certainly been the catalyst for improvement. Not only did Milroe never get sacked in this game, he was only hurried once, and turned that play into a big gain with a nice scramble. As for the running game, when the runner in question was Milroe, the numbers looked fine, but Alabama’s running backs only combined for 11 carries for 46 yards (4.2 avg.) and no scores. Alabama uncharacteristically seemed unable to finish plays up the middle. Again, the line did a nice job opening seams for Milroe, but there remains room to improve.
3. Alabama’s offense played the hunter role well, but not so much the role of clock-killer. Alabama’s first three offensive drives were among the best examples of offensive playcalling you’ll ever see. Alabama had Georgia’s defense completely turned upside-down and inside-out, and Georgia’s secondary was incapable of covering Bama receivers. Things tightened up for Alabama significantly in the second half, but a lot of that was self-inflicted, as Bama was trying to run clock. Overall, this offense seems to function far better when it’s chasing the rabbit rather than letting prey come to it. DeBoer and staff seems surprised to be in that role so early in the game, which may have led to inconsistent playcalling around middle-late portion of the game. If Bama can bottle up what it did on the first three scoring drives of the game, and use only that mindset going forward, there may not be a team that can stop the Crimson Tide.
4. DL couldn’t get adequate pressure unless Bama overcommitted. Beck’s safety was on a bring-the-house defensive call. Left to either a 3- or 4-man rush, Alabama didn’t get home nearly enough to keep Beck in check. The defense did a good job on third downs again, allowing only 3 of 15, but Georgia was successful on all 5 4th-down plays. Bama only hurried the QB twice and didn’t make a lot of stops for a loss. Whereas this was all part of the defensive gameplan for Beck, if so, it was the wrong plan to have as the game went along. Beck under pressure was a much different quarterback from Beck with time on his hands, perhaps even more so than other QBs Alabama has faced this year. It would have been nice to get a better push from the interior.
5. DBs finally (almost) met their waterloo, but the new defensive scheme has resulted in more negative plays. Alabama broke up 9 passes and picked off 3 more in the game, meaning Carson Beck suffered an acutely negative outcome on almost a fourth of his passing attempts. However, we finally got the answer of what would happen against a solid SEC offense – receivers running free at times in the secondary, big plays given up, the works. This will get better as Alabama continues to recruit to a defensive backfield that was decimated by graduation and the portal last year, and will get better still as the veterans continue to learn the new scheme. We’ve got to be fair, too, and give true freshman Zabien Brown kudos for coming up big when it mattered most. Brown was picked on multiple times during the game, but he closed the game by getting progressively more competent with each snap, and finished by picking off Beck in the end zone to secure the win. Brown was one of Alabama’s most heralded recruits in the last cycle, and his game has nowhere to go but up.
Follow Jess Nicholas on X at @TideFansJessN