Style Points Don't Matter as Alabama Grinds Out Third Straight Win over Ranked Foe

COLUMBIA, Mo.–– "Great road win for us against a really good football team," were the first words out of Kalen DeBoer's mouth to the media after Alabama's 27-24 win at Missouri. That sentence is pretty generic coach speak during a postgame presser, but there is a lot of truth and power behind those words.

It's not the type of sentence DeBoer was able to say often last season. In fact, with the win over the Tigers on Saturday, DeBoer surpassed his SEC road win total from his first season as the Alabama head coach. But Missouri is a good football team. The Tigers were 5-0 coming into the matchup and have lots of NFL talent. Time will tell how the rest of Mizzou's season will go, but this was a big win for the Crimson Tide regardless.

The close victory wasn't Alabama's prettiest game, but when you're winning on the road in the SEC, style points don't really matter.

"We got the job done," DeBoer said. "Proud of just the fight. We give up a touchdown early. We answer the call and just each side of the ball covering for each other. We fumble right away in the second half, short field, I know they scored a touchdown there, but defense came back out their next couple drives and just continued to play ball."

Alabama got punched in the mouth to start both halves. Missouri got the opening kickoff and easily marched 78 yards down the field in six plays to go up 7-0. The Tide answered back with an impressive 11-play drive to tie it at 7-7.

It looked like Alabama was going to have the opportunity to have a sizable halftime lead and set to receive the ball coming out of the break when the Tide got the ball back leading 17-7 with 5:28 to go in the first half. Instead, the Mizzou defense came up with a stop, forcing Alabama to punt, and the Tiger offense put together a nice drive right before the half to cut it to 17-10.

Things got even worse for Alabama when quarterback Ty Simpson fumbled on the first play from scrimmage of the second half, and the Tigers were in the end zone three plays later to make it a tie game.

That sequence got the sold-out Memorial Stadium crowd back into the game, but Alabama didn't panic. The defense settled in and continued to get stops. Alabama's offense continued its struggles in plus territory from a week ago, stalling several times in the red zone. The Tide also was unable to run out the clock with less than two minutes left, but when Alabama needed a touchdown in the fourth quarter to go up two scores, Simpson delivered.

The Alabama quarterback was critical toward himself after the game, and it was not his best performance of the season, but he made some clutch plays, including a 29-yard completion to Lotzeir Brooks on fourth-and-8.

"A year ago, we were not making the plays in the critical moments to win games," DeBoer said of the fourth-down conversion. "That was a big play to go win a football game.”

Alabama linebacker and team captain Deontae Lawson said the team has done a better job at creating its own energy and stepping up in big moments, especially on the road.

" I think we’ve got that edge that we need," Lawson said. "It helps us when we’re in enemy territory or an away game or anything like that. We know we’ve got to bring our own juice. We preach all week, or all year long, for real, to be elite in critical situations. Coach DeBoer makes sure he emphasizes that every weekend, and it showed up today.”

Simpson also connected with Daniel Hill from one yard out at the end of the drive for his third touchdown pass of the day. Simpson now has 16 passing touchdowns through Alabama's first six games, matching Jalen Milroe's season total from a year ago.

After dropping an interception earlier in the game, freshman cornerback Dijon Lee sealed the road victory on an interception with 37 seconds to go.

Alabama had several missed opportunities in the game. There were two Mizzou fumbles on the ground that the Alabama defense was unable to come up with. The offense had it first-and-goal at the 1 in the third quarter, and had to settle for a field goal. Conor Talty missed another field goal. DeBoer and the players acknowledged after the game that the team should've put the game away sooner.

"Even though we made some plays in critical moments at the end we also could've done a better job, I think, of putting the game away at other times throughout the job," DeBoer said. "It might not even be in the fourth quarter. It might've been in the third quarter. So, again, that's football. We found a way to win."

If anything, the fact that the Crimson Tide is still searching for a complete game should be an encouraging sign for Alabama fans. This team learned from a disastrous season-opening loss to win its next five games and start 3-0 in SEC play.

"The Florida State game, I guess, shocked us a little bit," Alabama center and team captain Parker Brailsford said. "We didn’t think that was going to happen. Just being able to come back and be resilient— I’m proud of those guys. They’ve shown a lot of resiliency throughout the season.”

The win on Saturday helped Alabama accomplish a feat Nick Saban only did once during his tenure as the Crimson Tide head coach: win three straight games against a ranked opponent. Depending on the result of Tennessee's game against Arkansas, the Volunteers will likely be ranked when they come into Bryant-Denny Stadium next week. After that, Alabama still has ranked foes LSU and Oklahoma on the schedule.

"You’ve just got to keep playing, right?" Simpson said. "This team is such a tough team, and all we do is fight. Three top-25 team games, and they all come down to literally the wire. That’s hard to do. SEC is pretty much like a pro schedule. A lot of good players, a lot of good teams. We’ve just got to keep fighting every week, but we’ve got to get better. We’ve got to go in tomorrow and clean some things up because we play a good team next week.”

To steal a phrase from Alabama softball coach Patrick Murphy, the Crimson Tide's win over Missouri was "gritty, not pretty." At the end of the season when the College Football Playoff selection committee is looking at resumés, all it's going to see for Alabama on Oct. 11 is a big W on the road against a ranked opponent.