2015 — Title #4 — Derrick Henry's Year

Alabama answered the 2014 Sugar Bowl with a 14-1 season that produced Derrick Henry's Heisman and the Saban era's fourth national title.

Record 14-1
Final Result National Champion
AP Final #2 post-bowls
SP+ +14.7 last-week
Era The Process Era
The Shape — week-by-week · cumulative W–L below
W vs Wiscon 35-17 W vs Midd Ten 37-10 L vs Ole Miss 37-43 W vs UL Mon 34-0 W @ Georgia 38-10 W vs Arkansas 27-14 W @ Texas A&M 41-23 W vs Tennes 19-14 W vs LSU 30-16 W @ Miss St 31-6 W vs Char Sou 56-6 W @ Auburn 29-13 W vs Florida 29-15 W vs Mich St 38-0 CFP W @ Clemson 45-40 CFP

Who carried it

Season leaders, 2015.

Defining Moments
The Recalibration

Ole Miss 43, Alabama 37 — Week 3. The only loss of the season. Saban's response inside the program: a shift to a Henry-first offensive identity the Tide rode the rest of the season.

The Coronation

Derrick Henry, 2,219 rushing yards, 28 touchdowns, the 2015 Heisman. The single-season rushing numbers reset the SEC ceiling for backfield production in the modern era.

The Crown

Alabama 45, Clemson 40 — the national championship. Kenyan Drake's 95-yard kickoff return + O.J. Howard's 51-yard TD decoupled the score. Title #16 in the program's count.

"We don't ask to be the biggest; we ask to be the hardest to run against in the fourth quarter."
— contemporaneous coverage voice · December 2015· synthesized
What It Meant

2015 is the chapter where the Saban era's second phase began. The Kick Six wound from 2013 and the 2014 Sugar Bowl loss had left open questions about whether the Process had plateaued. Henry's year — and the Clemson championship that closed it — answered them. The rest of the decade flowed from this season's template: a power-run identity with enough passing-game flex to win the fourth quarter, and a defense that surrendered only what it was designed to surrender.