Kalen DeBoer Praises 'Resilient' Alabama Safety for Iron Bowl Performance

AUBURN, Ala.— Junior Alabama football safety Bray Hubbard frequently finds himself at or near the top of single-game tackling production for the Crimson Tide. In Saturday's 27-20 Iron Bowl win, Hubbard only had two tackles, but he also had two of the most important plays of the game.

Hubbard intercepted Auburn quarterback Ashton Daniels at the Crimson Tide's 15-yard line with less than a minute to go in the third quarter. At the time, No. 10 Alabama (10-2, 7-1 SEC) led 20-13 and the Tigers (5-7, 1-7 SEC) were vying for a red-zone opportunity.

Alabama didn't score on that possession (even though Hubbard returned the ball to the 49), but later, after the Crimson Tide scored the game-winning touchdown late in the fourth quarter, Hubbard forced the football from the grip of star Auburn sophomore Cam Coleman. Linebacker Deontae Lawson made the recovery. Coleman was on Alabama's 20 when he got hit; the turnover eliminated a chance at the home team tying the game or possibly going for a two-point conversion.

"He was working through, just some sickness, and stuff like that," head coach Kalen DeBoer said following the game. "He's just tough. He's resilient, and he's, to me, one of the many guys that epitomizes what I'm proud of our team about. Just goes to work every day. Has a mindset. It means so much to him. He's gonna be a great teammate and give everything he has out there."

The game clock showed 33 seconds after the second turnover that Hubbard put his name all over. An Auburn touchdown on that drive would most likely have sent the game to overtime, whereas a successful two-point conversion after such a touchdown would have knocked Alabama out of SEC title and College Football Playoff contention.

"We played hard. We fought," Hubbard said. "Tough game. Tough environment. We knew it was gonna be a dogfight coming in here... It's really fun. When you look at it, it's everybody in the crowd versus the, however, 80, 90 people [that are] on the sideline. It's awesome to be able to come in here and get a win in somebody else's environment."

It was the Crimson Tide's third straight win inside Jordan-Hare Stadium, a venue in which late losses defined by big plays have tanked previous Alabama seasons. This time, even though the Tigers had multiple huge plays, the Crimson Tide made the clutch ones late to keep its goals intact. Auburn held onto all three of its timeouts and got the ball back on one last occasion but lacked the time on the clock to get anything big going.

"We're just resilient," Hubbard said. "After week one, it's literally win-or-go-home... After week one, it's just facing adversity every week, and we gotta respond to it, and just keep moving forward."

Fellow safety Keon Sabb, who had five solo tackles Saturday, is the player in whose place Hubbard stepped up last season. Sabb said the team's motto is about being unbreakable, which Hubbard exemplified after a week when he wasn't 100 percent at all times. He was in a black no-contact practice jersey on Tuesday, a development made less ambiguous by DeBoer's Saturday revelation that Hubbard hadn't been feeling well leading up to the Iron Bowl.

"No matter what happens, we get punched in the face, we're always gonna fight back," Sabb said. "It's about what you can do after the fact."

This season, Hubbard has four interceptions to go with a trio of forced fumbles. None of those forced fumbles was more important than the most recent one, which helped clinch Alabama a berth in next weekend's SEC Championship Game against No. 4 Georgia. Hubbard had nine total tackles on Sept. 27 when the two squads met in Athens.

"It's gonna be a great rematch," Hubbard said. "We went down there, and we came out with a win. They're a great football team, so we gotta focus on our corrections for the next 24 hours of this game, and we're gonna move on to Georgia."

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