Canes to open 2021 season against different Alabama team — with usual elite talent
Avid University of Miami football fans took note.
With 6:13 left in the first half of Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship Game, Alabama safety Jordan Battle — a hard-hitting, former Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas All-American — smashed into 6-5, 250-pound Ohio State tight end Jeremy Ruckert, leveling Ruckert but drawing a targeting penalty that got Battle ejected from the game.
Some emotionally invested Canes fans needed to know immediately via social media: Would Battle subsequently be suspended for the first half of Alabama’s next game — the 2021 season opener Sept. 4 against Miami at the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game in Atlanta?
Nope, came the answer. If Battle had been ejected in the second half, then yes, he would have had to miss the first half of the Miami game. But no such luck for the inevitable underdogs, who watched their next opponent win the national title on UM’s home turf at Hard Rock Stadium.
After the game there was similar fan angst, in reaction to photos of crimson confetti raining down on the Alabama national champions, and Canes fans in good fun posting GIFs with reactions that ranged from “OH HELL NO!” to “ANXIETY” to “God Help Us’’ to “Running clock please” to a man hyperventilating into a paper bag.
To add a little kick in the gut, the Crimson Tide used UM’s indoor and outdoor practice fields before the title game.
UM-Bama rivalry
The 2021 kickoff game will be played at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The Crimson Tide and Hurricanes have met 17 times since 1941, with Alabama winning 14 of those games. The last time the teams met was on Jan. 1, 1993, to end the 1992 season, when No. 1 Miami fell 34-23 to No. 2 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl for Miami’s lone loss that season. The victory secured the national championship for Alabama.
The good news for the Hurricanes, who finished their 8-3 season with a 37-34 loss to Oklahoma State in the Cheez-It Bowl, is that those megastars such as Heisman-Trophy-winning receiver DeVonta Smith and third-place Heisman quarterback Mac Jones and cornerback Patrick Surtain II and Doak Walker Award running back Najee Harris and most of the offensive linemen who won the Joe Moore Award as the top line in the nation are among the many Alabama players expected to be headed to the NFL Draft. They will have a new offensive coordinator as well.
The bad news, which really isn’t news, is that the Crimson Tide just reloads, and seven-time national champion Nick Saban is still the coach and Alabama’s 2021 recruiting class again is No. 1 in the nation. Case in point: Alabama’s quarterback-in-waiting, 2020 freshman Bryce Young, was a five-star recruit who was the 2019 Gatorade Player of the Year in California and nation’s No. 1 dual-threat quarterback prospect.
“[We] just continue to work and continue to hold ourselves to high standards,’’ said Bama receiver John Metchie III, a sophomore who will be back to face Miami and caught eight passes for 81 yards in the title game — finishing the season with 55 catches for 916 receiving yards and six touchdowns. “We set really high standards, so we have to reach or exceed it. Going forward it’s continuing to build up what this program means and what this program does, and just be able to get back to this point.”
Saban was asked by the Herald during a Zoom news conference the morning after the victory if he foresees a different type of team facing Miami in the opener.
Saban looks ahead
“I really don’t know much about Miami at all,’’ Saban said. “Obviously we had a big game last night, had a big game last week, had a big game before that in the SEC Championship Game.
“Look, the first thing we do is talk to the players about the future. Next week we’ll talk to every player on the team about strength, weaknesses, things they need to do to work on in the offseason to get better, whether it’s from a personal standpoint, whether it’s an academic standpoint, a behavioral standpoint, or a football standpoint. The process of trying to get our players to improve.
“Then managing the team that we have. I think in this day and age the way your roster can move, you don’t know for sure exactly how that’s going to be right now. Guys going out for the draft, some players transferring. We’ll just have to take it one day at a time. But that process begins immediately. We’ll go through offseason program the best we can. We’ll go through spring practice, if we have spring practice. We’ll continue to try to recruit the best we can. Hopefully we get back to normal here sometime soon.”
Who’s back?
Some of the other Tide players back for next season include starting linebacker and No. 2 team tackler Christian Harris, a sophomore who finished the season with 79 tackles; freshman defensive back Brian Branch, who had four tackles in the title game; freshman All-American starting outside linebacker Will Anderson, who had six tackles on Monday, 55 for the season, a blocked field goal and a team-high eight quarterback pressures; and nickel corner Malachi Moore, an All-SEC freshman who started 11 games and finished the season with 44 tackles, a forced fumble, fumble recovery, six pass breakups and three interceptions.
And there are more, such as sophomore safety DeMarcco Hellams, who started Monday and ended the season with 62 tackles.
Alabama defensive tackle Christian Barmore, a redshirt sophomore entering the draft, was the national championship game’s outstanding defensive player, with five tackles, a fourth-down sack and two tackles for loss.
He was asked Tuesday what he knew about Miami.
“University of Miami, we didn’t have them on the schedule so we ain’t look at them really because we didn’t play against them,’’ Barmore answered. “They’ll probably be a good team.
“But they have a good stadium, though.’’
This story was originally published January 15, 2021 at 8:56 AM.
