PASADENA, CA — It’s the mark of an overmatched team to use gimmicks to search for a seam. In that sense, old money Alabama was clearly overmatched against new money Indiana at an overcast Rose Bowl on Thursday, Jan. 1.
The two teams’ philosophies looked diametrically opposed in the first half. Where Indiana used a methodical offensive attack to move the ball north-to-south against the Crimson Tide, Alabama leaned on gadgetry to try find cracks in the last undefeated FBS team in the country. It failed miserably, with Alabama falling to Indiana 38-3 in a completely lopsided College Football Playoff matchup.
It was a browbeating so thorough, by the end would-be Alabama tacklers looked completely disinterested in bringing down Indiana ball-carriers.
Alabama’s shenanigans came to a peak with Indiana up 3-0 with 12:44 in the second quarter. On its own 34-yard line, Alabama went up to the line of scrimmage on a fourth-and-1 with Daniel Hill lining up in the wildcat.
Indiana responded with a timeout.
The Crimson Tide subsequently lined up to punt with Ty Simpson as an upback, with Simpson sprinting under center to try to spook Indiana into jumping offsides.
When that didn’t work, Alabama took a timeout.
Instead of cutting his losses, however, Kalen DeBoer again sent the offense out, again with Hill in the shotgun. Hill pitched the ball to Germie Bernard in motion on a jet sweep before Indiana swarmed him short of the line to gain, giving the Hoosiers the ball on the Alabama 34-yard line and leaving Crimson Tide fans across the country muttering, “too cute” under their collective breath.
Indiana capitalized on the opportunity, with Charlie Becker hauling in a 21-yard touchdown pass from Fernando Mendoza on the ensuing possession to procure a 10-0 lead and the first Indiana touchdown in Rose Bowl history.
“Just felt like it was going to be one of those games where you gotta take advantage of possessions,” DeBoer said of the choice to go for it after the game. He later said the choice to hard count before calling a timeout was to buy some time. “I try not to be reckless. I try to be aggressive. … Did the punt slash try to hard count, just give me a little more time to think about what my decision would be. Give some of the guys on the sideline a talk through the play-call. And so I really felt like … I was committed to going for it to try to make it happen.”
The sequence took approximately six minutes of real-life time and felt like a microcosm of how both teams approached the CFP quarterfinal matchup. Alabama desperately felt like it had to make something happen. Indiana was ready with a surgical counterstrike.
That’s the hallmark of a Curt Cignetti team. Despite his lamentations about poor practices and the challenges of traveling to Southern California, which Cignetti told media members after the game was a message to his team through the television, Indiana showed up when it mattered and never looked off kilter in any phase outside of a poor first series.
When it was 10-0 and Alabama began to put together a drive in answer to Indiana’s touchdown, it ended with a shot that left Ty Simpson shaken, causing him to fumble away what was to that point Alabama’s best scoring opportunity. Indiana held Alabama to 93 yards in the first half, including 64 passing yards, and was dominant at the line of scrimmage.
The second half opened with much of the same. A screen pass to Ryan Williams was blown up for a loss of two to put Alabama behind the sticks. Then another screen pass with more movement than substance to Josh Cuevas fell incomplete. On third-and-12, Simpson checked down and Alabama punted again, with the Tide’s pre-snap window dressing failing once again.
Entering this game, teams with a bye in the 12-team CFP were 0-6. So how did Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza and company avoid the hangover?
“Coach Cignetti did a fantastic job with the trickledown effect of really making sure there was no complacency,” Mendoza told reporters after the game. “Because you have 26 days off, it’s very, very tough, especially on the first drive as an offense — myself included — I think we got off to a slow start.
‘And then other than that, once we got our feet wet we had the ball rolling and got back to playing Indiana brand of football. And so I think it was great overcoming that challenge as a team having such a long time off, but I think we overcame that challenge and it showed on the field today.”
There is no way to twist it: Alabama didn’t lose the Rose Bowl. Indiana won it. And did so in dominant fashion.
The Hoosiers entered this game as the better team, and left it in another league. Mendoza vindicated a more disparate Heisman vote than many expected with a nearly flawless game, going 14-for-16 with 194 yards and three touchdowns. Defensive coordinator Kane Wommack tried to dial up pressure, but Mendoza broke the pocket and had multiple scrambles that kept Indiana on schedule.
In that regard, sometimes just being on time is the difference. Alabama’s inability to run the ball caught up to it on one of college football’s great stages, with the Crimson Tide finding themselves behind the sticks time and time again. Alabama was just 3-of-11 on third down, whereas Indiana was 9-of-14 thanks in large part to avoiding negative plays.
The game ended with a perfect summation of its tenor: On fourth-and-4 at the two-minute mark, with Alabama about to get the ball back down 35, the Crimson Tide jumped offsides to let Indiana take a knee to kill the clock.
There is no one stat that explains Indiana’s dismantling of the Crimson Tide. It was a beatdown, top to bottom, and the score reflected it. Now, Indiana goes into a semifinal matchup against Oregon in a highly anticipated rematch with sky-high expectations. It lived up to its No. 1 seed, shook off the curse of CFP rest, and legitimately looked like the best team in country.
So what will its follow-up performance look like?
“Well I’m not gonna assume anything like, we’ve bounced back from a number of big wins and we’ll be fine,” Cignetti said. “Because it’s process. So we’ll have a very big challenge ahead of us next week, it’s very hard to beat a really good football team twice. There’s no doubt about that.”