Alabama's defense uses another strong second half to stifle LSU

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Alabama’s defense did what it has for most of the season Saturday night against LSU. It made adjustments and kept its opponent from seeing second-half success.

The Crimson Tide and Tigers were tied 21-21 at halftime, but the latter scored with five ticks left in the second quarter and scored again after receiving the opening kickoff of the third to take a 28-21 edge. Both those drives amassed 75 yards, and LSU’s nation-leading offense appeared to be hitting its stride after racking up 323 first-half yards. But then the Tide turned.

After its first series of the second half, the Tigers were limited to just 70 yards over its final four drives Saturday night, which ended in two punts, an interception and a turnover on downs.

Alabama head coach Nick Saban applauded his defense’s resiliency in the final two quarters.

“I think that the defensive players did a great job of responding after those two drives, which we didn’t play very well in,” Saban said. “… Those are all things that we can learn from.

“But I think that our team has shown tremendous resiliency all year long, and they’ve always been able to make plays in the critical time of the game when they need to make them. Get stops at A&M, played really good in the second half against Ole Miss, came back against Tennessee, got a lot of stops.

“This is because of leadership, but it’s because of the competitive spirit of the group, as well.”

LSU entered the Week 10 contest with the country’s best scoring (47.4 ppg) and total (552.9 ypg) offenses and was averaging 340 passing yards per game. Quarterback Jayden Daniels was a top contender for the Heisman, and he showed why that was the case Saturday night, rushing for a career-high 163 yards and one touchdown on just 11 carries. 

But Alabama held him to a season-low 219 passing yards to go along with two touchdowns and one interception on 15-of-24 of his throws. The Tide made stops when it needed them late.

“When you’re playing a game like this, you got to encourage the defensive players to keep playing,” Saban said. “I think the thing that got us when he ran for 160-something yards, and most of those were on pass plays, it wasn’t like they were designed to quarterback runs. We had spies on him. Spy couldn’t get them on the ground. … So the best success we had was actually rushing five, kept him in the pocket, pressed him up a little bit.

“We told them in halftime, we got to be a little more aggressive. We’re gonna have to play man-to-man. We’re gonna have to push the pocket on the guy and we did a pretty good job with that. And of course, Dallas (Turner) getting the tipped ball and getting the interception was huge in the game, and that’s how you got to play it. But the last four times they had the ball, we got stops on defense, which was huge when the score was 28-28.”

The Alabama defense allowed seven second-half points, which marked the seventh time across its nine games this season that the Tide has given up seven or fewer points after halftime.

Cornerback Terrion Arnold, who recorded the game’s lone turnover, said the biggest adjustment Alabama made at intermission was communicating, over-communicating, but he jokingly would not reveal the message from Kevin Steele and the rest of the Tide’s defensive coaches.

“If I told you what Coach Steele said in there, they probably wouldn’t want me doing media,” Arnold said. “Nah, I’m just playing. But Coach Steele just going in there and really just getting us fired up, and obviously the second half, we could go out there and make adjustments.

“So when we go in there and make adjustments, we go out and execute. LSU did a good job of changing the picture, but we really want to go out there and start fast, and I kind of feel like we did a better job of that. And obviously, everybody’s calling us a second-half team, but we’re trying to continue to build and work as far as playing 60 minutes of Alabama football.”

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