Those in attendance that day can easily recall the taste of nausea working its way up from their stomachs, leaving a bad taste in their mouths. With one plant of the foot, the season was doomed.

Those not in Bryant-Denny Stadium likely felt it, too, as they read the ESPN ticker move slowly from right to left, revealing that Brodie Croyle was lost for the season with ligament damage to his knee.

It hurt all the more that Croyle, the University of Alabama's slender but rocket-armed would-be savior at quarterback, crumpled not under the weight of a 300-pound defensive lineman or to a speed-rushing linebacker. He fell victim to cruel fate, his right knee giving way on a short run ending his season and foreshadowing the rest of Alabama's.

Without him, Alabama's promising 3-0 start vanished, leaving in its place a 3-6 close.

It was more than a decade ago, Sept. 18, 2004, when Croyle tore his ACL in the second half of a blowout 52-0 win over Western Carolina. At the time it symbolized much more than a single injury. It could just as easily be viewed as a metaphor.

Alabama had become tenuous program at best, marred by instability at head coach (four coaches in five years) and nearly as many starting quarterbacks in a two-year stretch from 2003-04.

In the time since, though, the Alabama program returned to prominence, and it hasn't lost a starting quarterback to injury once.

After backups Marc Guillon and Spencer Pennington filled in for Croyle to play out the 2004 season, and Croyle closed his career on a high note in 2005 (10-2 with a Cotton Bowl win), only four players have made starts in the nine subsequent seasons: John Parker Wilson, 2006-08; Greg McElroy, 2009-10; AJ McCarron, 2011-13; Blake Sims, 2014.

All have suffered bumps, bruises, headaches and various ailments from the minor to the serious. None missed a start due to injury.

That's 112 starts combined.

Seem crazy? It kind of is.

Widely viewed as the best, most difficult conference in the country, the SEC annually fields more than a few of the top defenses.

That none has forced an Alabama quarterback to miss a start during the time remains fortuitous for the Crimson Tide.

Equal parts luck, character, stability and scheme, it's a streak that remains almost unbelievable.

"I think it's a combination of things," former All-American right guard Mike Johnson said. "I think we've definitely had some tough quarterbacks. John Parker Wilson is the toughest guy I've ever played with, college or pro. If you look at the offensive lines we had his first year, they were pretty rough sometimes. Had a lot of moving parts and had some suspensions. Toughness definitely plays a part in it.

"Towards the end of my career and the last few years, the offensive line protection has a lot to do with it. I also think schematically, the way Nick (Saban) runs his offense, kind of that West Coast, two-back power thing … we've never really run a spread offense or anything where the quarterback's going to run a lot. That's definitely had a lot to do with it as well."

Toughness has a lot to do with it.

During his three-year career as a starting quarterback, Wilson was sacked 77 times. That doesn't include the times he was knocked down or bowled over in the pocket or the times that he scrambled and took off running.

Then there's the time he learned the difference between high school and major college football.

In his fourth start of 2006, Wilson's sophomore year and first as a starter, he scrambled outside of the pocket to his right and was set to glide out of bounds near the line of scrimmage when Arkansas linebacker Sam Olajubutu launched Wilson out of bounds with a vicious hit. Wilson was knocked off his feet and about five yards out of bounds.

"It was my welcome-to-the-SEC moment I guess because I was running to the sideline and I pulled up a little bit because I thought I was just going to mosey on out of bounds, but he had other intentions," Wilson said. "He killed me. It was third down, and I had to kind of bend over, put my hands on my knees and catch my breath a little bit. He definitely got me. He got me good."

Wilson never missed a play.

It was that toughness that his teammates admired.

"You play hurt, you play banged up," Wilson said. "You train all week, you rehab all week to try and get back on the field. It was important to me to never miss a game. I think it's a little bit of luck, but I think you make your luck. I think you work your tail off during the offseason and during the summer to get your body ready to go because you know what you're going to experience in getting hit and getting banged up. I spent the whole offseason working out, getting my body ready to be able to have some armor to be able to take the hits.

"My shoulder came out against Florida my sophomore year. I kind of had a high ankle sprain that year. Just various bangs and bruises along the way. Luckily I didn't get a bad head injury, which is kind of an automatic sitting out. There's a lot of times when I had to limp around during practice and just suck it up. I never wanted to come out of a play no matter what was going on.

"There's times where you're squeezing your hand between plays, you can't reach up and grab your chinstrap because your shoulder's hurting so bad, you've got to reach with your left hand. That's just part of it. I think it's kind of a leadership thing, guys seeing you back there getting blasted and getting up and doing it again. That kind of rubs off on everybody else, and I kind of took a lot of pride in that."

Against LSU in 2007, Wilson was harassed all game by an aggressively fast Tiger defense, a team that went on to capture the BCS national championship. Despite being slung to the turf for seven sacks, Wilson never got happy feet, never left the pocket until he had to.

And when he was hit often, Wilson never reamed an offensive lineman out in the huddle for getting him sacked. He never showed them up on the field.

His linemen remember that about him. It's why they played hard for him.

"That was one of the best things about Brodie and about John Parker back in those days with some of the rougher offensive lines is that they never gave you the palms up like we like to call it, where they turn around and go, 'What's going on?' or try to make a scene like the prima donna quarterbacks tend to do," Johnson said. "I never had to deal with one of those.

"I go back to some of the games that Brodie had, the 11-sack game (against Auburn). Some of those games got a little rough for him. Those were tough to watch much less be the guy in the pocket throwing the ball.

"There's no question about it. It makes you want to go to battle for that guy and make sure they don't take those licks. When you've got a guy like that behind, it makes you want to take that burden off him even more."

Johnson played two years under Saban, and during that time the offensive lines improved. The unit continued to improve after he left.

To the point, by comparison, McCarron was sacked 52 times in his three years as a starter from 2011-13, 22 times less than Wilson.

It's not that the quarterbacks haven't been hurt during the last decade. They have.

Greg McElroy was knocked out of the Auburn game in 2010, but he played in the team's next game, the Capital One Bowl.

Sims injured his shoulder against Florida earlier this season. He had a bye week to recuperate and then started against Ole Miss.

So fortune has played a part in the streak.

Once luck wasn't so kind to Alabama quarterbacks.

"Has it really been a decade?" Pennington said.

Pennington suffered his share of injuries at Alabama: five concussions and a badly separated shoulder against Georgia in 2003.

"I think that's a huge compliment to the caliber of talent they're recruiting now," Pennington said. "The injuries that happened to Brodie, the injuries that happened to me, the injuries that happened to everybody was kind of a snapshot of Alabama football during those years. If you think about the turnover at the quarterback position but also at the head coaching position, my goodness. I started off getting recruited by (Mike) Dubose, I played for Fran (Dennis Franchione), I practiced for (Mike) Price and I played for (Mike) Shula. So it was kind of a metaphor for what Alabama football was back then. It was unsettled. It was uncertain.

"The offensive lines we've had here recently have been unbelievable. We went through a few years where there was a lot of turnover with head coaching changes. With Fran we were getting smaller, faster linemen to run the option. And then you bring Price in and he was one that wanted to go five wide and have a quarterback sit back in the pocket and throw the ball.

"I think one of the reasons the offensive lines have been so good and so stable at quarterback is we've had stability at the head coaching position. We know what type of offense we want to run. We know what players we want to recruit. And now it's just learning the system."

Regardless of the reasons - luck, skill, chance or design - the streak is something that means a lot to the guys who helped create it.

"There's a ton of pride in playing that position for Alabama," Wilson said. "Just to stay in there takes a lot of work, takes a lot of sleeping on one side because your other shoulder hurts. I think it's just respect and pride for the program."

Reach Aaron Suttles at aaron@tidesports.com or at 205-722-0229.