Last year at home with more depth across the board we were down 14-3 after 1, 21-3 midway through the 2nd, 35-10 30 seconds into the 3rd, 42-10 at the start of the 4th.
This year in Tuscaloosa we were up 14-7 after one, tied at 14 midway through 2, down 21-17 midway through 3, down 24-17 to start the 4th, down 31-24 several minutes into the 4th.
The home fans were so silent that you could hear our fans singing Rocky Top as late as the 4th quarter. We lost and Alabama ran it up late because they needed style points and got short fields vs a tired defense. But we were way way more competitive this year vs last even after losing 30 players to the portal including almost every top recruit from the upper classmen ranks. Add to it the playing walk-on OL, having nothing at linebacker to spell anyone, and typical Alabama holding on all offensive plays because they know that 95 percent of them will be ignored and it was a miracle performance by the team.
What I really never get is that a certain group of posters talk about how Bama is going to kill us all season. Then when we are surprisingly competitive their narrative shifts to we should be playing even better than we are, as they rip every little thing Heupel calls. Later, when the game gets out of hand late, they act like they hadn't been saying Bama was going to murder us all season and demand to know why Bama did what they'd been predicting all along anyway.