SEC Championship: Alabama 41, Georgia 24. The Tide had answered Georgia's season-long #1 ranking with a 17-point win. The rematch four weeks later looked like it would go the same way.
2021 — Lost to Georgia
Alabama won the SEC title, reached the national championship game, and lost 33-18 to Georgia — the final Kirby Smart / Saban head-to-head that broke in the disciple's favor.
The Shape — week-by-week · cumulative W–L below
Who carried it
- Bryce YoungQB4,872 passing yards
- Brian Robinson Jr.RB1,343 rushing yards
- Trey SandersRB314 rushing yards
- Roydell WilliamsRB284 rushing yards
- Jameson WilliamsWR1,572 receiving yards
- John MetchieWR1,142 receiving yards
- Cameron LatuTE410 receiving yards
- Henry To'o To'oLB111 tackles
- Will Anderson Jr.LB101 tackles
- DeMarcco HellamsDB87 tackles
- Phidarian MathisDL9 sacks
- Dallas TurnerLB8.5 sacks
- Christian HarrisLB5.5 sacks
Season leaders, 2021.
National championship: Georgia 33, Alabama 18. Stetson Bennett's 35-yard TD to Adonai Mitchell in the fourth quarter flipped the game. Georgia's first national title since 1980; first loss to Saban for Kirby Smart in four tries.
Bryce Young's Heisman — Alabama's fourth — coexisted with the title loss. The Young era would continue; the era's single-season apex was already past.
"The disciple learned."
2021 is the Saban era's first title-game loss to a disciple. Kirby Smart had been Saban's defensive coordinator; the 2021 Georgia program was Smart's five-year build. The Alabama chapter is not a crisis — 13-2, SEC title, Heisman — but it is the first visible sign that the Process's dominance had peer competition it would not outlast by default. The rest of the decade's narrative flows from this game's inflection.