There have been years in which Alabama has struggled to get through playing eight games in the first eight weeks of a football season, most notably the escapes of Tennessee during the Crimson Tide's national championship runs in 2009 and 2015.
This isn't one of those years.
Alabama entered this week's open date in impressive fashion, improving to 8-0 with Saturday's 58-21 shellacking of the Volunteers at Neyland Stadium. The Tide, who led 21-0 before the midway mark of the first quarter and 51-14 less than three minutes into the third quarter, do not play again until a Nov. 3 trip to LSU, which will be Alabama's sixth Southeastern Conference game of the season.
"We could keep going, for sure," Tide defensive lineman Quinnen Williams said Saturday night. "We're built to keep going. In this off week, we're just going to make sure everybody gets healthy and back to 100 percent. We also want to focus on all the plays that have beaten us in the previous eight games and just make sure we don't get beat in these next eight games, or however many we've got the rest of the season."
The Alabama-LSU showdown has been televised in prime time by CBS each of the past seven seasons, and the announcement of that arrangement for the eighth straight year is expected today.
Alabama enters its open date a unanimous No. 1 in the Associated Press poll and leading the nation in total offense with an average of 564.3 yards per game, scoring (54.1 points per game), team passing efficiency (226.3) and third-down conversions (56.2 percent). The Tide extended their program record Saturday to eight straight games with at least 500 yards of total offense, and they have averaged 370.3 yards per first half alone.
The average score of an Alabama game at halftime is 39-7, with the 42-14 advantage over Tennessee serving as one of the closer calls.
Sophomore quarterback Tua Tagovailoa threw for 306 yards and four touchdowns against the Vols and didn't play in the game's final 27 minutes. Tagovailoa leads the nation in efficiency (238.8) and has thrown 25 touchdowns with no interceptions, and he does not plan to take the open date lightly.
"I've got to work on getting myself better, first off, but we're just going to take the same approach as if we have a game," he said.
Tagovailoa's 25 touchdown passes through eight games - he has yet to play in a fourth quarter - has him just five away from tying AJ McCarron's school mark of 30 set during Alabama's 14-game championship season in 2012.
Alabama is expected to practice Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week.
"We've got lots of things to work on and lots of things to improve on," coach Nick Saban said Saturday. "Even today, we did a lot of good things but have a lot of things we can do better. We gave up some big plays, and we're going to be in more challenging games. We've been 8-0 quite a few times, but it's all in how you finish.
"This bye week comes at a good time for us to try and improve so we can have a better chance to finish like we want to finish."
LSU (7-1, 4-1) beat Mississippi State 19-3 Saturday. The Tigers moved up to No. 4 in the AP poll, which will give the SEC its biggest game of the regular season when the Tide arrive.
Standout LSU middle linebacker Devin White was ejected for targeting in the second half of Saturday's home win and will miss the first half of the Alabama game.
Brannon arrested
Alabama redshirt freshman offensive lineman Hunter Brannon was arrested early Sunday morning and charged with driving under the influence, according to the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office. The 20-year-old Brannon has yet to play this season and was not on the travel squad to Knoxville.
"We are very disappointed any time a player makes a choice that leads to this kind of behavior," Saban said Sunday in a release. "We are still in the process of gathering all of the details on the situation, and we will evaluate what we need to do in terms of appropriate discipline as we move forward."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.