Alabama Football: Are the Crimson Tide overrated?

The Alabama football team needed a late surge to overcome Tennessee. Just two weeks after a tough loss, can it be argued that the Tide are overrated?

The term “overrated” has received an exceptionally negative connotation over the years of its usage, most namely in the sports world. This is because the adjective is typically used to invalidate a team/player’s worth to at least some severity.

However, I feel that the word gets too bad of a rap; it means nothing more than what it is literally saying: something or someone is being rated higher than it should be. In other words, “overrated” is not synonymous with “bad.”

Keeping that in mind, I believe that declaring the Alabama Crimson Tide as overrated is a pretty fair judgment of them at the moment. Now the disparaging remarks that some would deal in response to a take as blasphemous as this one are so strong that you can almost feel them but hear me out.

I have two reasons for saying this, and they should both be rather obvious: The Tide first lost to a then-unranked Texas A&M, and they have now visibly struggled with a 4-4 Tennessee Volunteers squad at home.

For starters, the loss to Texas A&M should not only have never happened, but the game shouldn’t have even been close, yet the Crimson Tide was trailing by two scores at halftime. They were caught so heavily off-guard, in fact, that not only were they losing, but they appeared to be blatantly outmatched.

Yes, the Aggies are a solid power this year, but they have proven in multiple other games just how inferior they were to Bama when heading into their matchup together. Especially by the latter’s standards, you are putting a huge target on your back by coming up short under such inexcusable circumstances.

Secondly, this past Saturday’s win over the Volunteers just made me tune out the Tide entirely until further notice. That may sound a bit overdramatic, but by the logic of the college football community up to this point, is it really?

What were critics saying about Notre Dame icing away their battle with Wisconsin late? “Oh wow, Notre Dame, you guys aren’t that good; the game was much closer than the score.” Come to think of it, the exact same thing was said about Oregon following their late victory-clinching performance against Arizona.

Am I supposed to believe that Alabama football — which was up by only a touchdown in the fourth and final quarter of their game — should be treated any differently just because of their image?

The competitiveness died down because Tennessee got gassed in a big moment against a powerful team (surprise, surprise). If they hadn’t, the Crimson Tide just might have two losses right now.

Is Alabama good? Absolutely. Are they worthy to be in the top five of the rankings? Sure; if Oklahoma and Cincinnati are, why aren’t they? However, this is not the Tide that we are used to watching, and it’s certainly not the Tide that we watched in 2020. Let’s stop fooling ourselves into thinking that what we’ve been seeing so far this year doesn’t matter.

Alabama should still make the SEC title game, but Georgia will be waiting for them. At this rate, I’ll take the Dawgs, and not by an overly kind margin.