How an incomplete pass sparked Alabama football's Sugar Bowl romp vs. Kansas State | Goodbread
NEW ORLEANS − Jaheim Oatis dug in his heels. D.J. Dale, right beside him, did the same. And really, it was the entire Alabama football team that, collectively, needed to hold its ground.
For both the moment and the game. For both its season and its legacy.
With a minute to play in the first half of Saturday's 45-20 Sugar Bowl win against Kansas State, the Crimson Tide defense mustered a fourth-and-goal stop to turn away a meatgrinder of a KSU possession that lasted 18 plays and swallowed 10:32 off the clock. An errant pass from Will Howard fell incomplete to render the drive fruitless, allowing Alabama to cling to a precarious 14-10 lead, which it could have simply sat on when it took over possession at its own 2-yard line with 1:01 left in the second quarter.
Instead, quarterback Bryce Young led a lightning-fast 98-yard march for Alabama's third touchdown, and a 21-10 lead that made all the difference for the Crimson Tide, which closed the season with an 11-2 mark. Once the drive reached the Alabama 38, Young came out of an Alabama timeout firing for strikes of 28, 22 and 12 yards on three consecutive passes to put UA in the end zone.
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It was a fitting way for one of the most gifted quarterbacks Alabama has ever had to end his college career. The NFL draft awaits Young with first-round riches, presuming he decides to forego his senior year, and his Sugar Bowl performance provided an exclamation point on that status.
Kansas State tried to reclaim lost momentum with an unsuccessful onside kick to open the second half, and Young made the Wildcats pay in short order again, finding Ja'Corey Brooks for a touchdown pass on his best throw of the day. In the roughly two-minute span from the first half's last minute to the second half's first minute, UA averted the very real threat of a 17-14 deficit and instead raced to a 28-10 lead. It was a flex that UA frankly hadn't shown, at least not against its stiffest competition, for much of the 2022 season.
This time, Alabama showed the necessary grit.
And it came just as Kansas State looked like it had grit on tap. The Wildcats' 18-play, 73-yard drive for no points included two third-and-11 conversions plus two more of fourth-and-1 and fourth-and-4. The Alabama defense looked exhausted, and Will Anderson slipped while chasing Ben Sinnott on the fourth-and-goal stop; KSU quarterback Will Howard had an open man and overthrew him.
Early on, one would've thought Alabama overslept and missed the bus to the Caesars Superdome.
By the time Alabama's offense picked up its first yard, Kansas State's offense had 82. And if that wasn't enough of a wake-up call, Wildcats running back Deuce Vaughn ended the 10-minute snooze with the longest touchdown run (88 yards) the Sugar Bowl had seen in 64 years. Down 10-0, however, Young rubbed his eyes and began pouring the team's coffee for 35 unanswered points.
But it wasn't until the UA defense bowed its back on a fourth-and-goal that the caffeine kicked in.
Reach Chase Goodbread at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Alabama football: Sugar Bowl romp vs Kansas State sparked by this play
