What has been one of the strongest conferences in college football for the past decade has shown chinks in its armor in 2015 as the SEC prepares for its title game between No. 10 Florida and No. 2 Alabama Saturday.
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Derrick Henry, meanwhile, continued laboring as the tireless leading man for No. 2 Alabama (11-1, 7-1).
He’ll leave dwelling on the past to others.
“Shoot, I was able to coach in a couple of national championship games, but that SEC Championship game has more energy and more juice than that national championship game”, McElwain said last week.
AUBURN | There was no late magic this time, no particular play that will be discussed into dust two years from now.
“I just think it speaks to the quality of the league and how many good teams there always are in this league”, Saban said of the streak of no repeat champions.
He carried the ball a school-record 46 times for 271 yards and a touchdown in the Crimson Tide’s 29-13 win over the Tigers.
Henry ran for 114 yards and a touchdown on 19 carries in the fourth quarter.
Henry broke Trent Richardson’s single-season rushing mark and had carries on 14 consecutive plays at the end. “We’d really like for someone else to run the ball, but it got tough to take him out”, Alabama coach Nick Saban said afterward. “He’s the go-to guy and he didn’t want to come out. He wanted to go”.
Alabama, he said, “gave me the opportunity to be here at the University of Florida, and then to have the Gators playing them, that’s something special”. “I hope our offensive line; their knees might crack together from shaking because they’ve got to play against those guys”. But not only did the Crimson Tide return to reign over the SEC once again, rocketing back into the College Football Playoff conversation and No. 2 in the rankings, they did so by winning in nearly every way imaginable.
-Deshaun Watson, Clemson, accounted for 393 yards and four TDs and the top-ranked Tigers beat rival SC 37-32 to cap their first undefeated regular season since 1981.
Another former Bama student added ‘it’s Auburn and Alabama.
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Auburn bounced right back with Smith’s improbable but eerily familiar touchdown catch. The protection held up the second time, and it resulted in Johnson’s longest career pass, Auburn’s longest offensive play of the season and the Tigers’ only touchdown in the game.
Next week Henry can cement his Heisman case in the SEC title game against Florida. “Coach Malzahn has a good system and he says to us ‘believe in us and we’ll believe in you.’ We just did what we could and we played against a good team”.
After rushing for 90 yards in the initial half, Auburn ran the ball just 8 times for one yard in the final two quarters.
“We’re going to get there”, McElwain said. Next week, they taking on a flagging Florida team in the SEC championship. It’s his most popular subject, and the Tide have kept him pretty busy lately. He came off the bench to attempt an even longer one on the final play against Auburn in 2013 that Chris Davis returned 109 yards that’s even more of a distant memory now.
Griffith made five field goals, including four in the first half to help the Tide go into halftime with a 12-6 lead.
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The Tigers senior linebacker hit Alabama quarterback Jake Coker right at the out of bounds line.
