Reliving the loss: How falling to ULM built Alabama's dynasty

As Nick Saban walked out to midfield to shake hands with Louisiana-Monroe coach Charlie Weatherbie, a cascade of boos rained down. In his first season with the Crimson Tide, the new coach was able to lead the team past bitter rivals such as Tennessee and Ole Miss, but the proverbial wheels fell off the wagon in November.

After beating the Volunteers, Alabama lost its next four games, but the most painful and embarrassing came against ULM on a dark November day in Tuscaloosa.

“I think that the biggest thing is that we haven’t improved as a team since the Tennessee game,” Saban told reporters in 2007. “Some of the things that have happened to our team since that time have affected our continuity, affected our ability to be consistent, affected our confidence in how we played.”

The quartet of defeats extended another worrying statistic for the Crimson Tide as for two-consecutive seasons, the team did not win a game in November in nine tries.

Headlines were smashed with adjectives such as "painful" and "bitter" as ways to describe the loss, further predicting the team's performance as a sign of things to come rather than the dynasty that ensued.

Fast forward 15 years later, and Saban still remembers the feeling of that afternoon in 2007. Although, while Alabama gets ready to face the Warhawks on Saturday, he isn't sure if that game will resonate with the players of today.

"Well, history doesn’t seem to be on the forefront sometimes,” Saban said this week. “I do think that players relate better to things that affect them. Which, most of them, don’t remember those types of things. I think sometimes what happens currently, like what happened last week to a couple of teams, you know, maybe something that they can identify with and relate to better."

Saban might not be reliving the loss with his players this week, but there are a few members of the 2007 team who would like to provide a few words of advice to current Alabama players as they head into Saturday's game as 49.5-point favorites. Tide Illustrated caught up with three members of the 2007 team who shared their experiences of that game and how it built the program to the standard fans see today.

Eryk Anders did not have to wait to see how the game against Louisiana-Monroe unfolded. He could have guessed the outcome during the week of practice leading up to the game and would have been pretty close.

Anders was in his second season with Alabama when Saban arrived in Tuscaloosa, a year that was marred with a constant tug-of-war between the new head coach and the upperclassmen.

“We had the upperclassmen who were kind of resisting Saban, almost a mutiny,” Anders said. “He switched up everything. We used to have Mondays off, and there was none of that. There were no days off when Saban came here. He just kind of changed everything around and some of the upperclassmen really didn't like that.”

The changes kept coming throughout the season, but one aspect that Saban could not change until after the season was having unwavering respect for each opponent on the schedule.

Against premier SEC opponents such as Florida, Tennessee, Auburn and LSU, Alabama’s effort in practice and the team’s execution in the drills were raised by the opponent it was going to face.

As the team prepared to face the Warhawks, Anders saw a significant change.

“You saw guys dropping the ball that they shouldn’t have,” Anders said. “Guys were not forming up on tackles. From the coaches down, the intensity just wasn’t there. … I remember just the cockiness going into that game. We just kind of took them, took being Alabama for granted and playing for Coach Saban for granted. These guys have a chip on their shoulders. They think they’re good enough to play where we’re at, but they didn’t get the opportunity. They're going to take the opportunity to shine if they get a chance.”

While most players try to erase an embarrassing loss from their memories, Mike Johnson can vividly remember certain plays from that game like it was yesterday.

One thing that stands out in the former Alabama offensive lineman's mind is the suspensions the Crimson Tide had entering the game as starting linemen Antoine Caldwell and Marlon Davis, running back Glen Coffee, and defensive backs Chris Rogers and Marquis Johnson were all unavailable after they improperly obtained textbooks from the bookstore.

“It seems kind of laughable now with the NIL money,” Johnson quipped when asked about the infractions.

Despite the off-the-field issues, Johnson felt confident in the group after beating Tennessee at home just a month before hosting Louisiana-Monroe. While he felt that even with the suspensions, Alabama was “at least an eight-win football team,” like Anders, Johnson saw the drop in play thanks to back-to-back losses to LSU and then Mississippi State.

But Alabama looked to right the wrongs from the past two weeks and came out firing on all cylinders. Led by John Parker Wilson, the Tide marched down the field on a seven-play, 80-yard drive capped off by Wilson finding senior Keith Brown for the 17-yard score.

All seemed to be going Alabama’s way after the defensive stalled out two consecutive Warhawk drives before crossing the Crimson Tide's 40-yard line.

However, just like the cold and windy conditions on the field that day, Alabama's offense also began to freeze in its tracks. Wilson threw two interceptions on those drives which landed in the hands of ULM’s Quintez Secka.

On his second interception of the first quarter, Secka nabbed a tipped pass on the Crimson Tide's 43-yard line and began his return. He sashayed by four Alabama players before Johnson laid a thunderous hit on the safety, downing him at the 1-yard line. Johnson like the 100,000 people in the stadium that day could not fathom what he was seeing when he watched No. 21 in white bounding down the sidelines toward the endzone.

After laying the hit, the lineman got up and began jogging off to the sidelines thinking “What’s going on?”

That level of confusion persisted throughout the game as both teams traded scores until the fourth quarter. The Warhawks took their first lead midway through the third quarter and were just trying to bleed the clock. Meanwhile, Alabama's combination of first-time starters and lack of execution and focus began to prove costly.

Down 21-14, the Crimson Tide still had an opportunity to tie the game after getting the ball back on its own 19-yard line with six minutes left in the game. After picking up a first down, Wilson found Matt Caddell in the flat with a seven-man blitz coming at him. Caddell secured the catch and turned on the jets for a 25-yard game which moved the Crimson Tide into Warhawks territory with less than five and a half minutes left.

In the span of 45 seconds, Wilson completed his next three passes to move Alabama into the red zone. On second-and-2, the offense opted to run the ball to let the clock run down and decrease the risk of turning the ball over. Wilson handed it off to Jimmy Johns who gained the first down after making two Warhawk defenders miss before diving forward toward the ULM 15-yard line.

There was one small issue, he lost the ball about a yard before his knee touched the ground.

“I remember getting to the sideline and (the referees) we’re going to review it again, to see whether or not he fumbled,” Johnson said. “I thought, ‘Ok, I don't think he fumbled it. We'll get back out there and hopefully, we'll score and tie the game.’ I remember I was standing behind him and Coach Saban, and Coach Saban looked at him and said, ‘Did you fumble it?’ Jimmy looked back and Coach Saban and said, ‘Yeah, I fumbled.’ I remember my stomach just hitting my knees. That was it, that was the end of the game.”

The next four minutes zipped by, and before Johnson could realize it, he was jogging off the field with his head down ensuring he wouldn’t make eye contact with the fans.

“I remember putting my head down and running towards the tunnel and just thinking, ‘I don't even want. I don't even want to hear what people have to say about us because I know it's not good,’” Johnson said. “... I remember it to this day and tell my wife this, it was the most devastating day of my life.”

Just a few blocks away from American Christian Academy, roommates Preston Dial and Johnson along with Wilson and Johns sat in the tight end’s living room watching replays from the game. As the highlights rolled, Dial recalled an exasperated look on all of their faces. They weren’t upset that they lost, they were “pissed off” that it ever got to that point.

“We kind of all sat there and said, ‘Ok, here are three or four critical moments that cost us the game,’” Dial said. “If we execute, we win that football game. It wasn't sadness as much as it was frustration and kind of pissed off at ourselves for knowing that we all had a hand in one play not being successful.”

Dial had conflicting feelings about that afternoon’s game. On one hand, he hauled in his first collegiate catch snagging a pass from Wilson for 21 yards early in the second quarter. As a freshman, the first college catch is exciting, and while Dial celebrated with some teammates by the Alabama sidelines, he quickly had to move past it and onto the next play.

It was easier said than done for the Crimson Tide as once bad plays happened the team spiraled. The Crimson Tide finished with four turnovers in the game with two of them resulting in Warkhawk touchdowns on their ensuing drives.

Along with poor ball control, the offense struggled to run the ball in key situations, despite tallying 163 yards on the ground.

With two minutes left in the fourth quarter, Alabama needed a first down to keep the game going. After John’s fumble, the defense was able to force the Warhawks to punt with plenty of time left on the clock, but the Crimson Tide was forced to use all three of its timeouts during the series.

The ball was spotted on the left hash at the ULM 18-yard line and as Dial recalls they called for a “simple power play.” Alabama sent out its goal-line formation which featured Dial and two more tight ends to help keep the drive alive.

“It should be two to three yards every time,” Dial said. “If you bust it open, great, but if not, you should be able to get one yard in your sleep. That's kind of how we approach that play.”

As the ball is snapped, the Warhawks crowd the left side of the offensive line and before the pulling guard Johnson and Andre Smith can react to the extra pressure, ULM cornerback and Mobile, Alabama-native, Darrius Battles laid the initial hit on Terry Grant, stopping him short on the line to gain.

“We knew at that point we were staring down the barrel of an L,” Dial said.

When Sunday came around, Dial and the rest of his teammates knew exactly what was coming. With Saban in front of the meeting room, the team was going to review every single mistake the team made against the Warhawks.

Luckily for Dial and the group of teammates who discussed the game in his living room, they were already ahead of the game.

“There are no surprises in that Sunday team meeting,” Dial said. “If there are you might just not be a very smart person.”

Saban and the coaching staff did not let the players forget the loss throughout the 2008 season. On every individual locker, there was a laminated 8X11 poster capturing two of Alabama’s painful losses from the season before.

On one half of the poster, there was a picture of Mississippi State celebrating its 17-12 victory against the Crimson Tide in Starkville. The other half featured the scoreboard that read 21-14 after Louisiana-Monroe defeated Alabama.

“Basically the message was, ‘Don't forget that feeling,’” Dial said. “Don't run from it, don't run from the pain. Embrace that shit. … That was kind of our rallying cry going forward.”

In 2008, Alabama won 12 games en route to its first appearance in the SEC Championship since 1999. The team would lose its final two games to Florida and then to Utah in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. Despite the disappointment, it just set the stage for Alabama’s memorable run in 2009. The Crimson Tide went 14-0 that season en route to its first SEC Championship and national championship in the Saban era.

Even though the haunting memories of that loss in 2007 were two years old, Johnson held onto it and used it as a warning to younger players on the 2009 squad.

“Everything about the way I approached football, and even now being a coach, changed after that game,” Johnson said. “I mean, I was a captain two years later, and I remember we signed maybe the best sign in class and Alabama history in 2008, and we were going into ‘09 trying to run the table. I remember playing maybe Tennessee Chattanooga late in the year and warning those guys, ‘Hey, you weren’t around here when this happened, but it is possible.’”

With Texas A&M, Nebraska and Notre Dame all falling to Sun Belt Conference teams last week, the memories of that afternoon in Tuscaloosa came rushing back for Anders who parted with some words of advice for this season’s rendition of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

“We're paying these guys to come here and take this L, but the Louisiana-Monroe’s and Appalachian State’s they don't get the memo,” Anders said. “They're going out there with a chip on their shoulder thinking ‘I could have gone Division I too but I was too small, too short, or I wasn’t fast enough. These guys are coming in here with a chip on their shoulder, playing schools that they probably wanted to go to, or thought that they were good enough to go to when they were in high school.

“Don’t take them for granted because they’re coming to play.”