The healthier team won the college football national championship, and Nick Saban knows it.
That doesn’t cheapen Georgia’s 33-18 triumph over Alabama on the big stage. Injuries and how a team combats them are part of football, and Alabama failed to adequately respond to injuries to top wide receivers John Metchie III and Jameson Williams.
Alabama won a previous matchup between the teams, 41-24, at the SEC Championship in December. Metchie got hurt in that game, and Williams was lost in the second quarter of the rematch.
Saban explained after the season how the absence of those stars affected Alabama in the national championship.
“We’re playing with some guys who didn’t have a lot of experience, and it eventually got us in the fourth quarter,” Saban told the Alabama Football Coaches Association in January. “And we had the kind of team where we had a really good quarterback, and we wanted to have skill guys that they couldn’t guard, so we had two, (Metchie and Williams), that were…