BATON ROUGE, La. -- One touchdown was all it took for hope to evaporate in Death Valley.
The atmosphere, the electricity, the back-and-forth battle of a 50-minute slugfest was gone just like that. It was a one-hit knockout.
On third-and-9, Jalen Hurts took the snap, rolled to his right, spotted a seam in the defense and took off. Twenty-one yards later, Alabama’s precocious freshman quarterback found pay dirt.
Granted, there was still more than 9 minutes left to play. And the lead was only 7-0. But more than 102,000 fans in Tiger Stadium knew the truth: The game was already over.