Looking up in the Southeastern Conference football standings entering October is not a scenario Alabama has experienced under ninth-year coach Nick Saban.
If the No. 13 Crimson Tide fail to defeat No. 8 Georgia inside Sanford Stadium this Saturday, they will be in an unusually deep hole. Alabama dropped its league opener Sept. 19 to Ole Miss, 43-37, and hasn’t been 0-2 in league play since the debut season of Gene Stallings as coach in 1990, when the Tide lost close calls to Florida (17-13) and Georgia (17-16).
Alabama is 3-1 overall this season, getting its third win this past Saturday with a 34-0 blanking of Louisiana-Monroe.
Tide, take three
* 1. Alabama leads the series with Georgia by a 37-25-4 margin, with the Crimson Tide holding a 7-6 edge in the past 40 years.* 2. The Crimson Tide have won a nation-leading 87 games since the start of the 2008 season, with Boise State (84), Oregon (82), TCU (75) and LSU (72) rounding out the top five.* 3. Alabama’s 126 touchdowns allowed since the start of the 2009 season are the fewest nationally, with LSU (161) and Florida (165) next in line.
“I think how you respond to a loss says a lot about your character,” Saban said Monday in his news conference. “I like the way our team responded in this last game, and this will be a much bigger challenge for them – playing on the road and playing one of the better teams in the country, if not one of the best.