While competing with Alabama is certainly an enormous task, the game after Alabama often proves to be just as challenging for many teams.
The Tide’s victims tend to come out flat the following week and either lose to a team that they shouldn’t lose to or look extremely unimpressive in a win.
The best explanation for this phenomenon is that playing Alabama sucks a huge amount of physical and emotional energy out of a team. In the Gators’ case, they had been anticipating the Alabama game since the end of last season, even though they wouldn’t publicly admit that.