It's amusing how these hypothetical matchups are always a rout. Like on golf message boards, it's either Tiger routing Jack or Jack routing Tiger, depending who you listen to. There's no risk since it's never going to happen, so everybody is happy to project to the extremes.
Defensively, this is the most vulnerable Alabama team in years. Their yards per pass attempt rose to 6.0 from the surreal 4.3 of last season. But I'm still not willing to assume victory, let alone a lopsided victory, over a team with that many athletes and so well coached. I think McCarron would give us fits, backed by that type of running game and with such tremendous schemes. Nebraska 2001 was an incredibly vulnerable team so that final image provides a skewed appraisal of 2001 Miami. I realize nobody will agree but I think Ohio State 2002 would have given the 2001 Canes plenty of trouble. Not enough to win, but certainly not blown out. That was a nightmare opponent that I dreaded all season in 2002.
After our results against teams like Penn State 1986, Alabama 1992 and Ohio State 2002, IMO it's fairly amusing to assume a giant victory over Alabama from this era. Matchups from position to position sound cute but bottom line the opponent is going to feature an astronomical power rating, very similar to our own.
No one is assuming a "giant" victory, but if you watched Alabama closely this year, you saw their weakest champion. They had all but lost that LSU game and it wasn't some "flukey" turnover game (like our BC game) or anything like that. They were outgained by nearly 33% in total yards, LSU had 2x the time of possession. Oh, the refs? Nope. Alabama was called for 1 penalty the whole game and LSU was called for 7. LSU converted 10 of 20 3rd downs while Alabama converted about 10%. It took such an emotional breakdown by LSU and upswing by Alabama, that they were virtually sapped the next week (their lone loss).
This Alabama team was also its most vulnerable against good Offensive Tackles - just what TAMU has. What did the 2001 University of Miami have at Tackle? Two All-Americans.
People will overstate this version of the Alabama team because their lasting impression was a beatdown of a completely overmatched Notre Dame team. But, let's not push this too far.
