It was Alabama vs. the world on Friday night against Oklahoma. After getting thoroughly outclassed by Georgia in the SEC Championship, the noise surrounding the Crimson Tide reached critical volumes.
Alabama shouldn't be in the College Football Playoff. Kalen DeBoer is coaching for his job. Or maybe he's going to take the off-ramp to Ann Arbor.
That was the narrative heading into Friday night. And the start of the game fueled it even further as the Crimson Tide looked overwhelmed on the big stage and Oklahoma cruised to a 17-0 lead by the early second quarter.
Alabama had netted just 18 yards of total offense while Oklahoma had 17 points. Things looked dire.
And then Alabama did what it has done so often this season: it stared adversity in the face and didn't blink. The Crimson Tide scored the game's next 27 points on the way to a 34-24 win in the opening round of the playoff.
Through the noise and through the doubt, Alabama stepped up when its backs were against the wall, again.
Nobody embodies that better than Ty Simpson, who has shouldered a lot of the blame for Alabama's offensive struggles in recent weeks. Simpson completed 18-of-29 passing for 232 yards and a pair of touchdowns. And then he dropped the mic in the postgame:
"I guess we can thank you guys for that," Simpson said about the team's resolve after the loss to Georgia in the SEC Championship Game. "Ya'll kind of wrote us off. Appreciate that."
Alabama was motivated by the doubters against Oklahoma
It's clear from Simpson's comments that Alabama was motivated by all the vitriol spewing about them over the last couple of weeks. A lesser team might have been negatively impacted by the noise. But Simpson has said all year that it's "all about us" in reference to this team's mindset.
DeBoer may have come up with an even better mantra for the remainder of the College Football Playoff run:
"It was pretty much us vs. everyone," DeBoer told Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter.
It's always Alabama vs. the world. The media has carefully crafted ridiculous narratives, trying their best to shovel dirt on the team that has bullied the rest of college football for nearly two decades now.
How far this team can go is unknown. Indiana is a healthy favorite in the Rose Bowl on January 1st. But the Alabama team that fought back from the brink of defeat to knock off Oklahoma is capable of beating anyone.
Maybe they'll get a little more doubt to fuel the fire, too.