Alabama-Tennessee: Third Saturday in October is now the First Saturday of the Playoffs

Things change quickly in the SEC. Two weeks ago, Alabama was ranked No. 1 in the nation and Tennessee No. 4, and their traditional rivalry game — called “Third Saturday in October,” and you can probably guess when it’s scheduled — was setting up to be a battle not just for SEC dominance, but national preeminence.

Well, Vanderbilt and Arkansas made statements, and then South Carolina and Florida threw some punches, and suddenly what had been a battle of titans is now a scrabble of desperation. Two teams on similar paths — dominance, a shocking loss, an uninspiring bounceback game — meet Saturday in Knoxville, and the stakes for both are huge.

Alabama is fighting to determine its own identity. Since the second half of the Georgia victory, 10 quarters ago, the Crimson Tide has looked alternately lost, opportunistic and erratic, but rarely dominant. Over eight quarters against the Hogs and Gators, Tennessee has seen its early-season high-powered offense vanish into vapor.

Neither team is out of the playoff stretch; one loss might even be good enough to make the SEC championship game. But while Alabama and Tennessee have spun their wheels in mud, other teams — Texas, Georgia, LSU, Texas A&M — have kept on piling up wins, shrinking the margin for error. Two losses might not eliminate a onetime top-5 team from the playoffs, but two losses could very well mean the difference between a home-campus playoff game and a cold trip to a hostile environment in late December.

The Tennessee-Alabama rivalry dates back to 1901, and it’s inspired hate and ferocity on the level of virtually any SEC matchup. Dotted with characters from Bear Bryant to General Neyland to Peyton Manning to Ken Stabler, it’s a rivalry of streaks. Most recently, Tennessee won 9 of 10 from the mid-90s to the mid-00s, and then Alabama won 15 in a row during the Nick Saban dynasty.

"I've been told it's a big deal, and I know it's a big deal,” first-year Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer said this week, very purposefully saying nothing while speaking. “As a coach, they're all big and you take one at a time. But certainly understand the significance of the rivalry. Guys are going to be very motivated to go out and do their best and prepare well and be great on Saturday.”

"It's a rivalry game and college football as good as it gets here with these two teams playing,” Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said, “so looking forward to seeing our fans on Saturday.”

Two years ago almost to the day — that happens when you play the same weekend every year — Tennessee won perhaps its finest game of the 21st century, knocking off Alabama in Neyland Stadium and setting off a cigar-smoke-filled celebration that ended with the stadium’s goalposts dunked in the Tennessee River.

That likely won’t happen again this year if Tennessee wins, partly because a victory wouldn’t snap a decade-and-a-half losing streak, partly because Tennessee knows now to act like you’ve been there before. And also partly because Tennessee knows that now, beating Alabama isn’t the goal, but a step up the ladder.

In the first year of the DeBoer Era, Alabama already has a signature win, defeating then-No. 1 Georgia at home, and a once-in-a-lifetime loss, a shocking fall to Vanderbilt the very next week. Quarterback Jalen Milroe has detonated his Heisman hopes with some questionable decisionmaking and execution over the last two weeks — but he’s also enough of a consistent threat both in the air and on the ground that he can singlehandedly hold the Tide together.

Over in Knoxville, Heupel is building a juggernaut to compete with the Georgias, Alabamas and Texases of the SEC. Paced by redshirt freshman Nico Iamaleava, Tennessee has settled back to earth after averaging nearly 64 points in the Vols’ first three games. Since then, Tennessee hasn’t topped 25 points.

“Certainly there's big plays out there that we're a little bit off on, but even just the run game, some of our pass game, that's not vertically down the football field, we're close on things,” Heupel said. “Eleven guys gotta fully operate as one.”

The key for Tennessee is this: This isn’t the Alabama of the Saban era, and this isn’t — until further notice — the Alabama that hung 28 unanswered on Georgia. The Crimson Tide are vulnerable, and Tennessee could exploit Alabama’s now-fragile self-image. Iamaleava could follow in the footsteps of Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia and South Carolina’s LaNorris Sellers, both of whom found significant success against the Alabama secondary. If Tennessee can post up a two-possession lead — not at all unthinkable given the state of Alabama — the growing doubts and the lethal Neyland crowd could combine to make for some crushing pressure.

DeBoer hinted at the need to get his defense off the field earlier this week. “You look at yards per play, and we're making some teams earn it but we've just got to get off the field,” he said. “When those drives continue to stack on top of each other and there's more plays that your defense is having to play, it starts to wear you down a little bit more.”

Alabama’s a 3-point road favorite, and if there’s a discernible edge here, it’s probably in terms of experience. Milroe has fought through adversity on the road before; Iamaleava is still a largely untested quantity against high-level opposition. (Sorry, N.C. State.) Alabama’s defense, while erratic and prone to give up huge chunk plays, has faced high-level pressure before; Tennessee’s largely has not. Still, the home crowd at Neyland is a fearsome one, and “Rocky Top” will be tattooed on the brains of every single one of the 100,000-plus in attendance.

The winner of the Tennessee-Alabama game traditionally lights up cigars to celebrate the victory. Whoever takes this one will enjoy the smoke for a moment … but for both teams to reach their 2024 potential, there’s still a whole lot more work to do.