College Football Playoff: Which Top 25 teams are contenders, pretenders?
Since Nick Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa in 2007, Alabama has been college football’s best team.
The Crimson Tide have amassed a 118-19 record and have won four national championships under Saban’s tutelage, and in 2017, the team looks primed to continue this trend.
The team has amassed a 4-0 record so far in 2017 behind the arm of sophomore dual-threat quarterback Jalen Hurts, and have outpaced opponents by a combined score of 165-40, including an impressive 24-7 upheaval of then No. 3-ranked Florida State.
On offense, Alabama’s new offensive coordinator Brain Daboll has a potent pairing of sophomore quarterback Jalen Hurts and junior running back Bo Scarbrough to lead the team’s pro-style power running game, and for one of the first times in the program’s history, the Tide have a dual-threat quarterback who can diversify their run game and spread concepts like zone read runs and run-pass options.
On defense, Alabama has returned five members of its top-ranked 2016 defense, with a plethora of young, top-ranked recruits waiting in the wings to fill in the gaps. Currently ranked the seventh-best unit in the country in total defense, Alabama should be able to rely on this unit again in 2017.
After defeating its first SEC opponent of the year, Vanderbilt, by a score of 59-0, the team now must turn its attention to the SEC West, a division that is incredibly devoid of talent.
While the team will face have to face off against three ranked opponents in the final four games of the season, No. 25 LSU, No. 24 Mississippi State and No. 13 Auburn, none of these teams have the firepower needed to give arguably the deepest team in the nation a close game.
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If Alabama can remain healthy, an ever-present concern in college football, it shouldn’t have any trouble returning to the College Football Playoff for the fifth consecutive year.