I won’t get into the debate about which defense was better, but I think you have to take into consideration the context of the actual games. Bama, in most games last year ran off to HUGE leads. They were crushing the 1st half spreads most of the season. With such large leads, their opponents were forced to go into passing mode in order to make up ground. Maybe they took the foot off the gas on D the 2nd half?? It goes both ways though, I’m sure they gave up some chunk yards in a soft D, but they also probably made some big plays by baiting the the O (ie., INT’s and sacks).
Again, not debating either way, just throwing out a different perspective w/o just looking at a stat line.