Four plays into Saturday's meeting with South Carolina , Alabama football coach Kalen DeBoer had a choice to make.
The Crimson Tide offense had used three plays to get nine yards: a Jalen Milroe pass to Justice Haynes and two Haynes carries to get one yard from the first-down marker.
From those three plays, DeBoer said he was confident with his offense's tempo. He wanted to secure momentum. He wanted Alabama to make a statement after Vanderbilt had made a statement against the Crimson Tide a week previously.
"I was pretty confident they were saying to go," DeBoer said.
And Alabama went, securing a first down on a 2-yard Milroe scramble, setting up two 30-yard connections with Germie Bernard and Cole Adams before Milroe took it himself for a 1-yard score.
In the aftermath of embarrassment, this was the statement Alabama needed to make. It wasn't the team that just lost to Vanderbilt. It was the College Football Playoff contender that swarms the South Carolina backfield, that runs the ball at will to score touchdowns.
Alabama football was back. Or so it thought.
With fewer than two minutes to go in the first half, Alabama cornerback Jaylen Mbawke tackled South Carolina wide receiver Mazeo Bennett Jr. for a 1-yard loss, securing a fourth-down play with nine yards to go. Gamecocks quarterback LaNorris Sellers took Alabama safety DeVonta Smith out of the picture, and found Bennett wide open with cornerback Zavier Mincey nowhere to be found for a 36-yard score.
The team that had lost to Vanderbilt returned. The team that had lost to Vanderbilt remained for the rest of Alabama's 27-25 win against the Gamecocks . And momentum shifted.
Milroe was sacked for a safety on the next drive. When Alabama got the ball back after a Jihaad Campbell strip-sack, Milroe was taken down on a tackle-for-loss and a sack before throwing an interception to Jalon Kilgore with one second left, setting up a 37-yard field goal going into intermission.
That interception was DeBoer trying to get the momentum back, a similar mindset to what he had on the fourth down in the first drive.
"I don't like punting, you know, really any time," DeBoer said. "But that was, to me, the worst-case scenario. I guess I'm always just aggressive that way. You try to weigh the risk-reward and put the trust in the guys, the things we talk about."
After halftime, South Carolina responded with a 16-play touchdown drive lasting nearly nine minutes, a demoralizing set of 3-, 4- and 5-yard plays, of third-down conversions that erased Alabama's 14-point lead and put the Crimson Tide on a similar path to what it faced in Nashville one week prior.
Alabama ended up doing enough. A Milroe touchdown run and a 34-yard touchdown pass proved to be enough of a difference even with a Sellers 31-yard touchdown pass to Nyck Harbor , even with losing an onside kick attempt and giving the Gamecocks another shot that ended in an interception by Domani Jackson .
Alabama left Bryant-Denny Stadium with a win, the team's fifth of the DeBoer era. But it was not from the dominance the Crimson Tide had shown against Western Kentucky, Wisconsin and, for a half, Georgia.
It was another game "down to the wire," DeBoer admitted, something he's "getting accustomed to" with a road game against Tennessee up next And with future road games against LSU and Oklahoma coming, with home dates against Missouri and Auburn lingering.
"I think there's things we can certainly do to make sure it doesn't get to that point, but we always talk about finding a way to win," DeBoer said. "And as many times as it maybe looked like we weren't, we did."
Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at cgay@gannett.com or follow him @_ColinGay on X, formerly known as Twitter.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: What Alabama football performance vs South Carolina means
