After tough South Carolina win, what’s next for Alabama football in SEC play?

Tim Smith was not surprised with how tough Saturday’s win against South Carolina was for Alabama football. 

The Alabama graduate defensive end has been navigating SEC schedules since 2020. He’s been a part of four SEC regular-season losses since his arrival at Alabama: Texas A&M in 2021, Tennessee and LSU in 2022, and Vanderbilt in 2024. 

So when an SEC team comes to Bryant-Denny Stadium to play Alabama, Smith knows exactly what the Crimson Tide will get. 

“We play at Alabama, you know what I’m saying?” Smith said. “We everybody’s Super Bowl.” 

And for the past 10 quarters, Alabama has seen SEC teams’ bests, from the second-half comeback by Georgia to the four-quarter collapse against Vanderbilt and Saturday’s narrow win against the Gamecocks. 

Smith said he knows what outsiders say. He harkens back to Alabama coach Nick Saban, calling other thoughts and opinions “rat poison.” 

“But when it comes to us, when they play us, you might not recognize who the team is,” Smith said. “They came out to ball and beat our behinds. That’s one of the fantastic things about the SEC: Everybody wants our head.” 

That narrative has continued through the Saban era and into Kalen DeBoer’s. 

On ESPN’s “College GameDay,” Saban said he saw “a little bit of complacency, almost even arrogance” from the Crimson Tide after the Georgia game and into Vanderbilt week.

After what Alabama saw from Vanderbilt, and from the scare South Carolina gave the Crimson Tide Saturday, a familiar refrain rang out from inside the Alabama locker room. 

“We talk about it all the time, it’s hard to win in the SEC,” Alabama running back Justice Haynes said. “They are a really good team, and they took care of it today. That’s all we can ask.” 

It’s a mindset that keeps Alabama grounded in a conference that came into Saturday with nine teams in the latest top-25 of the US LBM Coaches Poll including future opponents Tennessee, Missouri, LSU and Oklahoma. 

Alabama still has notoriety in the SEC with what Saban built across 17 seasons in Tuscaloosa. But it’s a reputation that has hit somewhat of a roadblock over the course of DeBoer’s first six games with the Crimson Tide, especially over the past 10 quarters of conference play. 

In the past 10 quarters, Alabama has either looked beatable or been beaten. And as Alabama faces the meat of SEC play — what could be four ranked games in five weeks — adversity remains for the Crimson Tide, something wide receiver Germie Bernard said the team always talks about. 

“I mean, we knew it would come,” Bernard said. “It just depends on how you respond. We responded well this week and, I mean, we will just continue to fix things in practice that we need throughout next week and play a better game.”

Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him atcgay@gannett.com or follow him@_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter.