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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Texas, first down at the its 30-yard line, 7:14 left, Texas ahead <a href="http://stats.washingtonpost.com/cfb/boxscore.asp?gamecode=202309090073&home=73&vis=83&final=true" target=_blank>34-24</a>, C.J. Baxter runs left, three yards . . .

Texas couldn’t really run out all this clock here on Alabama’s home field, could it?

Second and seven at the 33, Jonathon Brooks runs right, five yards . . .

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Could Texas really take the superiority over Alabama it had carried all through a whiplash Saturday evening of highbrow college football and cement it with a pulverizing finish that left Alabama looking sort of meek? Could it use this last drive to loose all manner of national chatter about the end of the Alabama dynasty and the beginning of something fresh at Texas after 13 seasons of dreary lukewarmth with that 91-72 record since 2009-10?

“You have to be able to run the football when they know you’re going to run the football,” third-season Texas Coach Steve Sarkisian said after his uppermost win in his 27th Texas game since relocating in January 2021 from his offensive coordinator post at Alabama.

Third and two at the 38, Brooks runs left, three yards, first down, timeout Alabama, 5:19 left.

What an unusual thud for Alabama, with the 10 penalties for 90 yards, the two false starts for illegal snaps, the Texas receivers running in open prairie in the fourth quarter after Alabama led 16-13 and looked to put the clamp down, the struggles of quarterback Jalen Milroe and his fourth-quarter interception to Jerrin Thompson that helped Texas to a 27-16 lead, and now this closing scene. It’s this drive you never thought you’d see in all the Nick Saban years, in the seventh home loss in his 17 seasons here, the worst of the seven, and only the second since 2015.

The Texas fans remain and shout, “SEC! SEC!”

“We’ve worked long and hard on the cultural aspect of it,” Sarkisian said. The Arkansas loss two years ago, to name one debacle, receiver Xavier Worthy said, felt like a bunch of separate entities. Now, it feels like something else.

First down at the 41, Brooks runs middle for two yards, timeout Alabama, 5:14 left.

What an unusual peak for Texas, entering the national conversation for something other than towering underachievement, constructing two 75-yard drives in the fourth quarter, responding when Alabama led 16-13, and also when Alabama pulled within 27-24 with 11 minutes still left and the crowd started roaring like nuts and Texas linebacker Jaylan Ford would say, “I’ll even say myself my heart started racing a little bit. We were up by three but it felt like we were losing the way the crowd (was roaring).”

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“We focused on the opportunity all week,” quarterback Quinn Ewers said. “We were all fired up for the opportunity.”

“We were confident in our abilities, and it showed.”

Second and eight at the 43, Brooks runs middle, one yard, timeout Alabama, 5:09 left.

It wound down with Ewers just handing off the ball, time and again, a perfect display of football mastery. He had played well in Texas’s 20-19 loss to Alabama in Austin a year ago, but a Dallas Turner hit had thrown his shoulder to the ground and ended his day at one quarter. He had returned after three missed games and had done well enough, but even the keenest football viewers couldn’t gauge his actual prowess, and people yakked about his insufficient deep throws.

Vasha Hunt

Now the second-year quarterback still toting around the No. 1 recruit millstone had himself a milestone night. He didn’t overwhelm — 24-for-38 for 266 yards, three touchdowns, zero interceptions — but he did do something maybe stouter: He stayed in.

Sarkisian: “I don’t think the moment was too big for him.” And: “To be in this environment and not have one false start.” And: “And it’s not like we lined up in static formations.” Also: “He never got stuck in his first read.” And: “He has a really good understanding of what we were calling passing-wise, and that ball was getting out.” And so: "I think it can serve as a springboard for Quinn, if he can re-create the (practice) habits.”

“Maybe so,” Ewers said of the breakthrough idea. “I guess that’s up to you guys (media).” Caution: “I mean, it’s still early.” Brooks: Ewers was “just being a vocal leader; when things didn’t go our way, he made sure we were still up.” Defensive end T’Vondre Sweat: “He’s a dog.”

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Third and seven at the 44, Brooks middle and then left, 14 yards, first down.

“In the end,” Sarkisian said, “as the game wore on, you could kind of feel some of the coverage going to Xavier, and that kind of created some plays” for other guys. Worthy did not mind. "He was recognizing the double-coverage,” Sarkisian said, “and he said, ‘That’s a good thing.’”

On the 75-yard drive in just three plays that pushed Texas ahead 20-16, Ewers floated one on the left to tight end Ja’Tavion Sanders, who had enough open prairie to charge up the left and then over to the right for 50 yards all told, to the Alabama 7-yard line. The next play brought Ewers’s touchdown pass to Adonai Mitchell.

On the 75-yard drive in seven plays that pushed Texas ahead 34-24 with 8:23 left, Ewers found Jordan Whittington short to the right for a 31-yard rumble, and then Mitchell gapingly and achingly behind the defense for a 39-yard touchdown after which Mitchell blew kisses to the audience.

“Nice kisses,” he winked. “I love everybody.”

First down, Alabama 42-yard line, Keilan Robinson, middle, three yards, inside four minutes.

Mitchell transferred over from twice-defending national champion Georgia, where his 40-yard touchdown catch from Stetson Bennett in the 2021-22 national championship game in Indianapolis nudged Georgia ahead of Alabama 19-18. On Saturday night, he caught three for 78 yards, the two touchdowns.

“He makes plays,” Ewers said. “That’s what he does. So happy he’s on our team.”

“The work never stops,” Mitchell said.

Second and seven, Alabama 39-yard line, Brooks runs middle, no gain.

In the end, Sarkisian would hug his former boss and tell something in Saban’s ear. Saban would look positively crestfallen walking off, as if from just the manner of how it happened.

Third and seven, Alabama 39-yard line, Brooks up the middle for four yards, inside three minutes left.

“I would not be standing in front of you guys if not for Nick Saban,” Sarkisian said afterward, soon adding, “University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, changed my life.” His life famously had gone messy when Saban extended “an olive branch.” And so: “To come here and to play them and to play the way we played, it’s humbling.”

Fourth and three, Alabama 35-yard line, Texas lines up, Alabama jumps offside, first down.

Here was Alabama as you’ve seldom, if ever, seen Alabama: in beaten disarray.

“It’s great to have emotion and play with emotion,” Saban said, his hopes for one last large hurrah dealt a dent. “Everybody should have that. But that emotion has to be channeled into tangible, functional execution. So you’ve got to focus on the task at hand, one play at a time. It’s got to be very intentional. If you get emotional” — and he carried out the “al” syllable on that — “then you make bad choices and decisions. Your brain doesn’t work like it needs to and bad things happen, whether you make a mistake on defense, whether you snap the ball poorly, whether you jump offsides.”

First down, Alabama 30-yard line, Ewers takes a knee, loss of two.

The Texas locker room would boom with joy, audible through the walls. “It was amazing,” Brooks said.

Second down, Ewers takes a knee, loss of two.

“I think Sark did a good job of instilling confidence in us,” Ford said, of the coach who prevented the fear he certainly noticed in many a team in that visiting locker room in this hallowed place.

Third down, Ewers takes a knee, loss of two, end of game.

“Seven minutes to go,” Sarkisian said, “and finishing the game with the ball in our hands and never giving it back to them. It’s kind of indicative of how far we’ve come.”

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University of Virginia, BA in rhetoric and communication studies

Chuck Culpepper covers national college sports as well as some tennis, golf and international sports for The Washington Post. He wrote previously for Sports On Earth/USA Today, The National (Abu Dhabi), the Los Angeles Times (while London-based), Newsday, the Oregonian, the Lexington Herald-Leader and, from age 14, the Suffolk Sun/Virginian-Pilot.

Chuck Culpepper

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