As the famed Southern sportswriter Lewis Grizzard used to label his childhood friend Weyman C. Wannamaker Jr., my own good friend from many Alabama games, Jeff Trammell – “A Great American,” as Lewis would have put it – once passed along this nugget of wisdom about football games that are closer than you think they should be: “I’d rather almost lose than almost win.”

Indeed.

For about 50 minutes of clock time Saturday in Columbia, S.C., Alabama – especially the vaunted Crimson Tide offense – seemed to try to do more than just almost lose. It’s just that the Alabama defense wouldn’t let them.

Everyone knew two months ago now that getting to the second of two off-weeks with a 7-1 record, following the opening-week debacle against Florida State, would be nigh impossible. Everyone, that is, but Alabama.

The Crimson Tide polished off its fifth straight SEC opponent, with three of those five games taking place on the road. In a conference where regular-season road wins happen with about the same frequency as road NBA playoff wins, the fact Alabama is here with its armor mostly intact is an accomplishment in and of itself. The fact that those three road wins happened the way they did – late against Georgia, late against Missouri and late against South Carolina – is chicken soup for the Crimson Tide soul after watching Alabama wilt on the road multiple times in 2024. If you’re the type who believes Alabama is championship material – and to be frank, Alabama has the best resume of any team in college football at the moment by a crystal-clear margin – then having the resiliency to overcome against all odds and the noisiest crowds in America ought to make you feel at least somewhat optimistic.

Leading up to the 10-minute mark of the fourth quarter, Alabama looked like what it was: a tired football team, battle-weary from a month playing four ranked SEC opponents, and the reward for the end of that four-game gauntlet was a road trip to one of the SEC’s toughest venues for visitors, to fight against what amounted to a light cavalry determined to take out one of the SEC’s tank columns. South Carolina frustrated Alabama’s offense, the Gamecock secondary matching up especially well against Alabama’s depleted wide receiver corps, and made the most of their interior defensive line matchups against Alabama’s offensive line.

From the 10-minute mark in, however, it was a different game, with Alabama’s offense, and especially QB Ty Simpson, steeling their nerves and cutting down on errors. A low-error Alabama team far outclassed the Gamecocks, which has too many holes to win battles straight-up for long. South Carolina just needed to keep Alabama at bay for those ten minutes, but Deontae Lawson ‘s strip of South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers marked the second straight week that the defense made a play worthy of hanging almost the entire postgame analysis on it like a Christmas bow.

Nearly every championship-caliber team has a game or two that tests their mettle in ways fans don’t see coming. Kalen DeBoer’s 2023 Washington team that played for a national title had three of them: one-score wins over seriously overmatched teams Arizona, Arizona State and Washington State.

Maybe this Alabama team can look back at South Carolina with retrospection … round about the third week in January.

Here’s the Five-Point Breakdown for Alabama-South Carolina:

1. Defense played valiantly all day, even while tired, and was ultimately the difference. Yes, it’s a team win and we’re going to get into the offensive issues in the points that follow, but the fact Alabama was able to hold South Carolina to a pair of field goals in the first half was impressive enough, and made especially so by an Alabama offense that couldn’t get out of its own way. DaShawn Jones finally put up a highlight play for himself with a pick-six on South Carolina’s first drive, and Alabama was able to box in South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers the closer the Gamecocks got to the end zone. We also can’t miss the opportunity to talk about Deontae Lawson’s play to strip Sellers of the ball in the closing two minutes of the game, and for Lawson to help Tim Keenan locate the loose ball after the fact. Two great bookend defensive plays on either side of this game, first Jones and then Lawson, and the cherry on top was snuffing out the final Gamecock drive after a botched kickoff return in an almost carbon copy of the finale of the 2023 Auburn game. We’ve been waiting for the defense to play this way for awhile, and all phases got involved. The defensive line held the Gamecock running game to fewer yards per carry than Alabama’s own deficient running game, the linebackers tightened up their play and put up very few poor run-gap fits, and the secondary – with the exception of the one long play to Nyck Harbor, a play that was well-designed to remove S Keon Sabb from his deep post responsibility – played good football overall. Kane Wommack and his players all deserve attaboys for this performance.

2. The offense misfired like an antique British sports car for most of three quarters, QB Ty Simpson most of all. We’ll get deeper into the “why” in point No. 2 but the problem wasn’t strictly on Simpson’s shoulders. Ryan Williams had a critical drop, as did Rico Scott, who was playing more than expected after Isaiah Horton left the game early with an undisclosed ailment. Simpson’s worst play was an overthrow on an easy route to Germie Bernard that would likely have put Alabama up by nine points at the time, 21-12. Given South Carolina’s own offensive struggles, a nine-point lead at that moment might have been too much for the Gamecocks to overcome. Simpson’s erratic play early was probably a combination of the hits he’s taken over the past months and the specter of playing with an ineffective running game. South Carolina was able to control Alabama’s running game with basic personnel formations, so when the Gamecocks did decide to turn up the heat, it was felt in even greater ways. Simpson’s footwork looked jittery at times in the early going, and bad footwork at the quarterback position invariably leads to poorly-thrown footballs. But when it was go-time late in the game, Simpson more than responded. The last 10 minutes of the game was a Simpson-led masterclass in QB play, and it forced South Carolina just far enough back on its heels that Alabama was able to find some measure of success running the ball.

3. OL took a step back – because it took too many steps sideways. The Alabama running game is frequently DOA and today was more of the same. Starting tailback Jamarion Miller got only 26 yards on 10 carries and backup Daniel Hill only 10 yards on 3 carries. Alabama knew that it would have issues with South Carolina’s fine defensive end tandem of Dylan Stewart and Bryan Thomas, but it probably wasn’t expecting to have quite as much trouble as it wound up getting from the Gamecock defensive tackle rotation. Former Alabama DT Monkell Goodwine obviously came inspired to play, but it was Nick Barrett that Alabama couldn’t find the answer for. For that matter, Stewart recorded a TFL but no sacks, and Thomas only 1 sack on the day, but they rerouted running backs to linebackers on a regular basis and made the sledding tough. Alabama’s offensive line didn’t attack upfield enough, spending far too much time going lateral with their steps and trying to beat their assignments with too much technique and not enough power. This is going to be an issue against Oklahoma and maybe Auburn as well, two teams that Alabama needs wins against for more than just the immediate reason: Oklahoma because it’s a revenge game, and Auburn because it’s … well, Auburn. The off-week could wind up being huge for this unit.

4. Special teams almost made the difference. We profiled an edge to South Carolina in this category and Shane Beamer, who has a long history – not just himself, but his from his father Frank as well – at putting strong special teams onto the field, nearly made that edge the difference in the game. The turnover on a punt return may have actually been planned; South Carolina appeared to have its gunners run close together and then fire a directional punt into the coverage lane. People talk about “directional punting” as if it only means coffin corner-style kicks, but it can have its applications elsewhere. The punt in question was kicked toward the coverage gunners, probably in the hopes that it would create confusion for Alabama, and it did. But as a lot of other things changed late in the game, so did the level of South Carolina’s dominance in this category. With every punt, Blake Doud kept pinning South Carolina further and further back; he averaged 55.4 yards per kick. And then there was the chef’s-kiss moment at the end, when Alabama elected to attempt what turned out to be a perfectly placed squib kick that South Carolina mishandled inside its own 10. Q.B. Reese’s tackle of Nyck Harbor sealed the Gamecock offense’s fate.

5. Ryan Grubb and Kalen DeBoer certainly don’t lack for guts in playcalling. Fourth-down attempts (and conversions), trick plays on a touchdown, trick play for a 2-point conversion, and the final kickoff were all evidence of a no-guts-no-glory approach to playcalling. The design of both scoring plays to Bernard got Gamecock defenders out of their lanes, and while the first of the two plays was technically a pass, it functioned more like an extended handoff. Choosing to squib kick at the end was risky in and of itself, not only because South Carolina came into the game highly-ranked in both returns and return defense, but because Conor Talty had been knocking kickoffs through the back of the South Carolina end zone all game long and could certainly have done it again there. But again, no guts, no glory, and Alabama left Columbia with all the glory that comes with a last-minute comeback win.

Follow Jess Nicholas on X at @TideFansJessN