Alabama Football: An Open Letter to the 2020 Team

The following is a letter to the 2020 Alabama football team: a squad that performed more than admirably in the face of chaos.

Dear 2020 Alabama Football Team,

I was initially going to write about some statistical pattern or anomaly, relating you guys to your opponent on Monday, but I feel an appreciation post is in order given what you’ve accomplished throughout this strange season.

The truth is, I didn’t think you guys would play in 2020. Most of us didn’t. March hit (right as you were starting spring practice) and COVID-19 came with it. COVID-19 sucks. My wife and I tested positive for it a day after your victory over Missouri and we were incredibly lucky to feel relatively minor symptoms.

A lot of others weren’t so lucky. Even your seemingly indestructible leader, Coach Saban, wasn’t immune to the disease’s ubiquity. He put on a brave face for the fans and the media (and you guys, most likely), but he wasn’t feeling well and he missed y’all’s game against your biggest rival, the Cow College.

Luckily, this Alabama football team, like so many before it, runs on a certain autopilot that doesn’t necessarily require the Greatest Of All Time to be present for it to be successful. Coach Sark (OC Steve Sarkisian) manned the controls and the machine kept churning.

It didn’t even matter that NICK SABAN wasn’t on the sidelines for the 2020 Alabama football team to win 42-13 that afternoon.

A lot of the 2020 season felt underwhelming. At least for this contributor. I believed that the rug would be pulled out at any moment. And for a brief time, it was. At one point you didn’t play for three weeks because a certain team from Baton Rouge couldn’t get it together. (Sorry, but it’s true)

Y’all showed major discipline. It makes all the sense in the world: your head coach is a near-maniacal control freak who convinced everyone in the program to bubble up as much as possible.

Luckily, everyone made it through, and here y’all sit, one game away from a sixth national title in twelve seasons.

A lot of the athletes on your team were in grade school when Coach Saban won his first with the Crimson Tide in 2010. What the 2009 season set into motion, though, made what we’ve seen this year possible. Since, Alabama football has signed 50 5-stars (including the six in the 2021 class), won four more national titles and watched 32 former players taken in the first round of the NFL Draft.

I agree with fellow Bama Hammer Contributor, Lauri Springer on the ’20 team being special. I expect Alabama football fans will agree your team is the greatest if you beat Ohio State tonight. For many of us, you are already one of the greatest, no matter what happens in Hard Rock Stadium.

Players deal with bumps and bruises, even tears and fractures for entire seasons. You guys expect this. You don’t, however, expect to be laid low by a deadly pandemic. Hell, even the ones not quarantined for testing positive, can still be held out due to contact tracing. Did y’all know contact tracing was a thing before 2020? I sure as hell didn’t.

I think we’re all going to be okay if we never hear the phrase “social distancing” again. You guys did what was necessary to have a season. You social distanced. You avoided parties, gatherings with friends, any event that asks of you to be a college student. Being a college student is the only thing that keeps you from losing your minds amid the pressure of playing for the Alabama football team.

If y’all don’t emerge victorious Monday evening, though, don’t fret for what could’ve been. As your head coach would say, “It’s just one game, guys.” We’ll all be sad (some angry), of course, but you’ve had four victories over Top Ten teams and a full conference schedule that proved just how motivated the 2020 team was.

Smitty, you won almost every conceivable individual award possible and you looked incredible in the process. Mac, you became ‘Bama’s first Davey O’Brien winner and you’re on track to best Joe Burrow’s seemingly-insurmountable QBR rating. And Najee? It is this contributor’s opinion, that your 2020 season made you the most complete running back in Alabama football history.

Boy howdy, the defense had its issues, but it sure did course correct after that disastrous outing in Oxford. PS2, you cemented yourself as the nation’s best defensive back. And Will Anderson and Malachi? Y’all were simply revelatory in your freshman seasons. It was such a blast to watch this squad improve in so many fundamental ways throughout the season.

I just wanted you guys to know that when I sit down Monday evening to watch this wonderful group of guys take the field one more time, that I’ll be locked in. I’ll be a proud fan regardless of the outcome.

Thank you to Devonta and Mac and Najee and Landon. Leatherwood, Miller, Jaylen and B-Rob. Dylan, both Christians, Phil and Will, Chris and LaBryan, Surtain and Jobe. Thank you to all the coaches and support staff who made the 2020 season tenable. Thank you to the leaders who marched down University Boulevard in search of better things. Thank you to all the athletes for playing through pain and illness.

Thank you for it all and Roll Tide.

Love,

Jonathan

Editor’s Note: We are proud to have Jonathan share his personal feelings, that to us, match those of Crimson Tide fans.