The 2020 college football season was ... a lot.
It frustrated, divided and exhausted us. It turned coaches into amateur epidemiologists. It asked players to take on extra risk to make money for others, as collective feet continue to drag on getting them the added economic rights they have been owed for decades.
It also, however, gave us perfection.
SP+ grades 2020 Alabama as the greatest team ever
I'm not here to tell you which stats or algorithms to believe. There are plenty of good systems out there, and they all tell interesting stories. I like my SP+ ratings, because of the depth of the stories I can tell with them. I've run them with complete play-by-play data going back to 2005, and I've created estimated versions of them from 1883 to 2004 based on game results and scores. It provides solid predictive accuracy in the present and contributes wonderful historical context for a lot of the writing I do.
I say all of this for one specific reason: SP+ thinks more highly of Alabama's 2020 team -- which just wrapped up a perfect 13-0 campaign with a 28-point thumping of Ohio State in the College Football Playoff National Championship -- than any other team in the history of the sport.
Best teams since 1883, according to SP+ percentile ratings:
2020 Alabama (99.718)
1959 Syracuse (99.692)
1956 Oklahoma (99.691)
1959 Ole Miss (99.651)
1974 Oklahoma (99.612)
Slap whatever disclaimer you want on this: This was a pandemic season; everyone played a different number of games; depth charts were randomly wiped out by COVID-19 issues (in addition to all the normal football issues a team has to deal with -- injuries and whatnot). Feel free to apply an asterisk to everything we saw this season; I can't stop you. But Alabama dealt with all of those issues, right down to losing two key offensive stars to injury (wide receiver Jaylen Waddle and center Landon Dickerson) and, for a spell, losing their head coach to a positive coronavirus test. The Crimson Tide played more games than any team this season and more SEC games than any team has ever played in a season, and they not only went unbeaten, they won all but one game by more than 14 points.
Having monitored these ratings all season, I figured the Tide would end up pretty high on this list. I also expected Ohio State to give them a pretty tight battle. Instead, the Buckeyes were underwater by halftime of the title game. Yes, injuries and COVID-19 protocols had a role to play in that -- Ohio State was missing two key defensive linemen, then lost star running back Trey Sermon to injury on his first carry -- but again, Bama was missing stars, too. And the Tide dominated the Buckeyes so thoroughly that they rose past every other truly dominant team college football has produced.
That's stunning in and of itself. And it's more stunning to think of how Alabama reached this point: with offense.
In response to the proliferation of the spread offense, burgeoning run-pass option concepts and the no-huddle, Nick Saban famously asked back in 2012, "Is this what we want football to be?" Some friends of mine in the college football community and I have long joked that, while it seemed at the time that he was complaining, he wasn't; he was simply asking for confirmation. Once it turned out that the answer was yes, he slowly set about building one of the most furiously effective spread offense and RPO games the world has ever seen (albeit without a lot of the hurry-up aspects).
In October, Saban gave another increasingly famous quote, this time to ESPN's Chris Low: "It used to be that good defense beats good offense. Good defense doesn't beat good offense anymore. ... It used to be if you had a good defense, other people weren't going to score. You were always going to be in the game. I'm telling you. It ain't that way anymore."
It's one thing to say this. It's another to properly respond to it. Saban, a lifelong defense-first adherent, asked Lane Kiffin, then Brian Daboll, then Mike Locksley, then Steve Sarkisian to modernize the Alabama attack. The "new" Bama offense started out at 23rd in offensive SP+ in 2015, then rose to 14th and 11th in 2016 and 2017. The Tide ranked first in defensive SP+ each year, but the trade-off began to take shape in 2018. Alabama rose to second in offensive SP+ (behind only Oklahoma), but ranked seventh on defense. In 2019, the Tide were second and third, respectively.
This fall, with Sarkisian calling the plays and adding an extra layer of tweaks, fakes and eye candy to the proceedings, Alabama's offense was just about perfect. Even more so than the last perfect offense we saw: 2019 LSU.
Despite playing two more games against SEC foes and avoiding any nonconference cupcakes, Alabama posted numbers that either matched or topped those of the magnificent 2019 Tigers attack.
Points per game: 2020 Alabama 48.5, 2019 LSU 48.4
Yards per game: LSU 568, Alabama 542
Yards per play: LSU 7.9, Alabama 7.8
Success rate (no garbage time): Alabama 59.3%, LSU 57.4%
First downs per game: Alabama 28.1, LSU 27.9
Third-down percentage: Alabama 58.9%, LSU 49.7%
Total QBR: Alabama 95.9, LSU 94.7
When Saban won his first national title at Alabama in 2009, his Tide scored 32.1 points per game (21st in FBS) and allowed 11.7 (second). Eleven years later, they averaged 48.5 (first among teams that played more than four games) and allowed 19.4 (13th). This was a full-scale evolution. Saban rebuilt his incredible program around offense, and it produced maybe the best full-season performance of all time.
This might also be the greatest college football dynasty ever
Let's think bigger. Yes, this Alabama team was incredible, even if how you view the Tide is clouded by the pandemic year. But when it comes to Saban's legacy, this is just part of the picture. Once you patch together Saban's Bama run into a single entity, it stands up against anything we've seen in college football's expansive history.
Here's a list of the extended runs of greatness that include (1) at least seven seasons, (2) at least two AP national titles and two SP+ No. 1 finishes and (3) top-10 finishes in either the AP poll or SP+ for 80% of the seasons in the sample. These are the most dynastic of college football's dynasties in the poll era:
Of these 13 great runs, here are the seven that happened under a single coach:
Alabama 1971-81 (Bear Bryant)
Alabama 2008-20 (Nick Saban)
Army 1943-50 (Red Blaik)
Florida State 1987-2000 (Bobby Bowden)
Notre Dame 1964-74 (Ara Parseghian)
Oklahoma 1948-58 (Bud Wilkinson)
Southern California 2002-08 (Pete Carroll)
Bryant's Alabama had two dominant eras -- his 1959-67 run almost made this list as well, but the Tide finished first in SP+ only once -- though he dealt with a three-year lull in between. Carroll's USC had maybe the most explosive run of them all (five SP+ No. 1s in seven seasons), but it burned out a little more quickly than the others.
For sheer, sustained longevity, only Bowden's 14-year run can top what Saban has done (though Saban will tie Bowden if Alabama finishes in the top 10 next year). And not only did Bowden's Seminoles finish in the AP top 10 every year from 1987 to 2000, they finished in the top five every year. Saban can't even say that; the Tide finished 10th in 2010, seventh in 2013 and eighth in 2019.
If you want to say that gives Bowden the edge, go ahead. But Bowden won only two national titles in that span. Saban has an incredible six. Maybe Bowden wins more titles in a College Football Playoff, but maybe Saban does, too, if there's a playoff before 2014.
Beyond titles, the Tide have finished atop the SP+ rankings eight times in this span. Even in the 1800s, when there were only a handful of football teams, Harvard, Princeton and Yale were passing the No. 1 ranking back and forth. No one held it eight times in 13 years.
If it has felt like we're watching the greatest single-coach dynasty this sport has seen, it's because we very well have been. And if you look at the more extended runs of multicoach brilliance above, only Bob Devaney's and Tom Osborne's Nebraska teams in the 1970s and 1980s can compete with what we're seeing. However, the Huskers won only two titles.
DeVonta Smith vs. title game Heisman greatness
Let's switch to the player level, where we nearly saw another "best of all time" performance on Monday night.
We should thank the anonymous NFL scouts who didn't grade Smith as high as teammates Jerry Jeudy and Henry Ruggs III at this time last year. Even though Smith was the best receiver on the team in 2019, he returned to school to raise his draft profile and ended up finishing what might be the most impressive career résumé from a wide receiver.
Smith hauled in the national-title-winning touchdown toss from Tua Tagovailoa as a freshman in 2017; caught 235 career passes for 3,965 yards and 46 touchdowns (48 including rushing and return scores); became the first receiver since 1991 to win the Heisman Trophy; then dominated in this season's College Football Playoff to help win his second national title.
Mercy.
Let's put Smith's absurd championship game performance against Ohio State in proper context.
I put together a list of Heisman winners over the past 53 seasons who either played in the national title game (1998 to 2020, the period in which a national title game existed) or played in a bowl in which their team had a legitimate shot at the national title (1968 to 1997, the period for which the final poll was taken after bowl games).
By my count, 27 Heisman winners played in such a game. At worst, Smith's performance ranked about fifth or sixth. I rank him third.
Best performance from a Heisman winner in a national title game (or thereabouts):
Joe Burrow, LSU (2019): 31-for-49 passing for 463 yards and five touchdowns in a 42-20 CFP National Championship win over No. 3 Clemson
Charles White, USC (1979): 39 carries for 247 yards and a touchdown in a 17-16 Rose Bowl win over No. 1 Ohio State
DeVonta Smith, Alabama (2020): 12 catches for 215 yards and three touchdowns in a 52-24 CFP National Championship win over No. 3 Ohio State
Matt Leinart, USC (2004): 18-for-35 passing for 332 yards and five touchdowns in a 55-19 Orange Bowl win over No. 2 Oklahoma
O.J. Simpson, USC (1968): 36 carries and catches for 256 yards and one touchdown in a 27-16 Rose Bowl loss to No. 1 Ohio State
Tony Dorsett, Pitt (1976): 32 carries for 202 yards and a touchdown in a 27-3 Sugar Bowl win over No. 5 Georgia
Reggie Bush, USC (2005): 19 carries and catches for 177 yards and one touchdown in a 41-38 Rose Bowl loss to No. 2 Texas
Danny Wuerffel, Florida (1996): 18-for-34 passing for 306 yards, three touchdowns and an interception in a 52-20 Sugar Bowl win over No. 1 Florida State
Derrick Henry, Alabama (2015): 36 carries for 158 yards and three touchdowns in a 45-40 CFP National Championship win over No. 1 Clemson
Charles Woodson, Michigan (1997): One interception, four pass breakups, 0.5 tackles for loss, 13 rushing and receiving yards and a 15-yard punt return in a 21-16 Rose Bowl win over No. 8 Washington State
It's a quantity vs. quality thing here: Smith touched the ball only 12 times, while O.J. Simpson and Tony Dorsett touched it over 30 times and, in Simpson's case, gained more yards. But Smith averaged nearly 18 yards per touch and scored more touchdowns than either Simpson or Dorsett.
Even more impressive, of course: SMITH DID ALL OF THIS IN ONE HALF. He dislocated his finger on his first target of the second half and left the game, having already led his team to an 18-point halftime lead.
Smith was the target of 12 of Mac Jones' 25 first-half completions, producing more than 60% of Jones' passing yardage. Jones wasn't as productive in the second half (Bama was running the ball a lot more), but had Smith maintained those rates for Jones' second-half passes, Smith would have finished with something in the neighborhood of 17 catches for 292 yards and possibly a fourth touchdown. If you take his position into account, that game maybe tops this list. It's second, at worst.
One other note here: If Jones had won the Heisman instead of Smith -- Jones finished third -- then we'd have a new No. 1 on this list. Jones finished his evening with 464 yards (one more than Joe Burrow) and five touchdowns on 45 passes (four fewer than Burrow).
Hyperbole is a great, provocative weapon for a writer. Nothing is genuinely provable, and any claims of all-time greatness are forever debatable. (That's what makes it such great debate fodder.)
But I'll say this: If you want to claim that the greatest coach in the history of college football just produced the greatest team in the history of college football to further the greatest dynasty in the history of college football (and with the greatest receiver, to boot), I have the stats to back you up.