Kirby Smart Finally Solved His Alabama Problem. Did He Solve the CFP Committee’s, Too?

The Bulldogs’ SEC championship domination snapped a 22-year Alabama streak in the Peach State and may have pushed the Crimson Tide out of the playoff field.

Georgia players celebrate with head coach Kirby Smart during the SEC championship game. The Bulldogs beat the Alabama Crimson Tide. / Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

ATLANTA — The Houndstooth hex is, at least for now, over.

Across a hard-to-fathom 8,099 days, Alabama lorded over Georgia within the Bulldogs’ state lines. That’s 22 years of misery and angst and, sometimes, sheer terror that have led to one-way results for the Crimson Tide in a streak which predates nearly every player on either current roster. Be it Athens or Atlanta, it never seemed to matter whenever the two rivals met in the Peach State, the result was always the same: The Tide came out on top.

Few know this dynamic better than Georgia coach Kirby Smart. He was 1–7 against his former employer coming into this season’s SEC championship and more than directly responsible for a handful of those seven losses. Fake punts, blown coverages and ill-timed fourth-down decisions reinforced that he had an Alabama problem.

On Saturday though, that streak became a thing of the past as Smart and the Bulldogs slayed their most frustrating stumbling block in a 28–7 win at Mercedes-Benz Stadium to secure back-to-back conference titles. 

In the process, with such a convincing victory that was far more lopsided than the final score indicated, they may have also solved the College Football Playoff selection committee’s conundrum.

Should one of No. 10 Notre Dame or No. 12 Miami be in as the final at-large? This has been the question percolating for weeks, a topic of debate that is forefront in the sport every Tuesday with the teams several spots apart despite Miami beating Notre Dame in the first game of the season.

After the Crimson Tide were shut out for three quarters, turned the ball over, had a punt blocked and rushed for a grand total of -3 yards though, why not have both make the field and kick Alabama out? It’s a very real possibility now after Georgia handled the lone team which has posed a problem for it the past two decades.

“To win back-to-back SEC championships, it’s every kid in this footprint’s dream,” Smart said. “An honor to be at Georgia and to be the head coach here and win games like this.”

The committee likes to say it evaluates the entire body of work and considers every data point from a season full of them. Every game, every result, every minute detail when it comes to sorting out who’s in and who’s out of the field. 

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Conference championship games have typically not had an oversized impact on the rankings, but they do serve as the final impression. Alabama added another data point into that equation and it wasn’t a positive one no matter how much they wanted to spin it in a conference whose commissioner spent much of Saturday morning stumping for seven SEC teams to make the field.

“If this game applies to and takes away from our résumé, I don’t think that’s right,” Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said. “I don’t know how [the SEC championship game] can hurt you when you’ve done what we’ve done all year.”

If Bama merely wanted to be the fifth from the league this season in a 12-team field, it probably shouldn’t have become the first team to be shut out in the SEC championship game through three quarters. It’s not advised to go for it on fourth down from your own 12-yard line or hand a game over to your opponents without a single scoring drive of over 57 yards either.

What’s more, they really should be sending thank you cards to Georgia defensive back Demello Jones, who was called for pass interference in the red zone on a third-and-6 play that wasn’t even close to wide receiver Ryan Williams early in the fourth quarter. The penalty extended Alabama’s only meaningful second-half drive and led to its lone points of the night when wideout Germie Bernard beat the blitz on a screen play to race 23 yards for a touchdown. 

That put a stop to 62:27 of shutout ball by the Bulldogs over the Tide owing back to their meeting earlier this season between the hedges. 

Will those seven points—and a pass interference that could go down as an incredible sliding-doors moment in Tuscaloosa, Ala., for this coaching staff—be the difference for Alabama making the playoff? It’s hard to say that a full-season résumé comes down to a single, nullified offensive play. But if the Tide were even in such a position to make the playoff in the first place, that it could be the case is incredibly damning for a group who sure have spent much of the past six weeks backing their way into the field.

Alabama wide receiver Germie Bernard uses a stiff-arm to break a tackle by Georgia defensive back KJ Bolden. / Gary Cosby Jr. / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

“I’m not nervous at all,” said Tide quarterback Ty Simpson, who was 19 of 39 for 212 yards, a touchdown and an interception. “I think our résumé speaks for itself. We went through a gauntlet of a schedule, in the SEC—the best conference in the country. That’s a really good team and that’s as simple as that.”

That résumé is speaking for itself and it’s not as stellar as the beat-up signal-caller would like to believe. The Tide haven’t won a single game by more than one score in the second half of the season against FBS opposition and fell to 1–2 in their last three games against SEC teams. Much of their reputation stems from that first half of the initial meeting against Georgia, a quality win over 10–2 Vanderbilt at home and … not much else. If we’re really dialing down into the details, does beating eight-win Missouri really underscore you’re worthy of the CFP over a team that has won 10 straight—or the one who beat that same group in August? 

“They’re in a really solid position this week at No. 9,” selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek said of the Tide on Tuesday. “We’ve been comparing Alabama, Notre Dame, BYU and Miami collectively and evaluating those teams and how they look.”

This isn’t last season though, where SMU lost a heartbreaker in the ACC title game to Clemson but still remained in the playoff, ironically knocking the Tide out as the last at-large. 

Given how both BYU, in a Big 12 championship game blowout loss to Texas Tech, and Alabama struggled to move the ball in their last grasp at solidifying a spot in the rankings, perhaps they will be removed from that quartet altogether.

“I don’t think you could say that the résumés really of any of these teams in the top 13 or 14 are significantly better than one another,” Yurachek said earlier in the week.

Those words are notable. If the résumés have little-to-no separation between them, then Alabama better be quite concerned that what it showed against Georgia simply wasn’t enough to book a trip for a first-round road game in two weeks.

Georgia wide receiver Zachariah Branch celebrates after scoring a touchdown during the fourth quarter against Alabama. / Brett Davis-Imagn Images

Perhaps the most telling comment came a few minutes before Smart returned to the locker room one last time Saturday to celebrate his fourth, but sweetest, SEC championship. 

As his players were wrapping up their typical postgame media opportunities with confetti still attached to their pants, a reporter asked about the Bulldogs’ stellar defensive effort. Senior safety Daylen Everette, who picked off Simpson to set up the team’s second, and decisive, touchdown, asked to repeat the question.

Smart deadpanned in interruption, noting it was really about the Bulldogs not giving up a touchdown like their defense did in nearly every other game. While that isn’t a completely accurate statement from the head coach, the sentiment was spot on. The one team which couldn’t figure out Georgia in a game this season was the one that seemed to always figure the Bulldogs out when the lights shined the brightest. 

Until Saturday night, at least, when they had every opportunity to make the case they were one of the 12 best teams in the country and instead proved they weren’t.

“If that game affects Alabama ... I don’t know if it will or not, I have no say so in it,” said Smart, who notably had all of the volume to his voice from a lack of yelling over the course of four quarters. “But I sat in those shoes many times where that game cost you an opportunity.”

Things are different at Georgia now though. The hex is over against Bama and the only question is if the Tide are suffering from one of their own as they go into Selection Sunday as a nervous bubble team yet again.

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