Paul Finebaum explains why losing vs Texas A&M would have been brutal for Nick Saban

After all of the bravado and barbs traded between the two teams’ head coaches this summer, Texas A&M vs. Alabama delivered on the hype, even if both teams were missing their starting quarterbacks. Of course, the Aggies came up a hair short, failing to convert on a befuddling play-call on the final play.

So Alabama narrowly escaped with the win. Nonetheless, SEC Network analyst Paul Finebaum came with away with several negative takeaways for the Crimson Tide. First and foremost, for the ‘Bama fans, who he says called into his show all offseason with guarantees of domination in this year’s rendition of the Alabama-A&M game.

“Since May 19th, I wish I had collected and gotten a dollar for every call from an Alabama fan saying Jimbo’s in for a [rear-end] whipping. Well, you know, that’s not exactly what we saw last night and my mind was racing.”

Finebaum continued, noting that if the Tide had actually lost that game, it would’ve been bedlam in the southeast.

“If they win this game, it is going to be Armageddon, at least where I live and work. Because, I mean, you could not have found a more brutal loss for Nick Saban after all of this. And he escapes. Now, he doesn’t escape for long. And I’ll put a pause on that for a second.”

Paul Finebaum then pivoted to discuss the decision to keep Bryce Young out, which he supported. However, he did find it bizarre that Alabama considered putting him in later in the game.

“But I think the takeaway from this is the smart decision to keep Bryce Young out of the game. Although it looked like he was getting pretty close to coming back in, which makes no sense. And what is he going to be like? Because if this was a tough game, just wait till next week.”

What’s next week? A date with Tennessee in Knoxville, who just embarrassed LSU on their home field and possesses one of the best offenses in the country.

“Because what I saw in Baton Rouge, yesterday, I mean, that was just scary. When you think about this Tennessee team, I don’t care if it was a day game, night game, middle-of-the-night parking lot at Walmart. I mean, that was just hard to watch if you were sitting there wearing purple and gold.”