Clearly the pupil has not surpassed the teacher

Smart showed he is still not Saban. He may be able to recruit like Saban but not game plan like him. Saban is surprisingly adaptable. Kirby has strong tendencies to revert to conservative. Saban shifts as needed from his old style of "win with a dominant defense and bully ball run game" to what we saw yesterday. At heart, Smart would still rather win by trying to shut opponents down completely and completing 10-12 passes a game. When that isn't going to work, we're stuck.

Mysteries about this SEC championship game:

#1 - Alabama came off two tough SEC games, including a battle with Auburn. We were rested and playing cupcakes, with plenty of time to develop a strong game plan. The Auburn game should have been very revealing of how to play Alabama defensively. Yet, it seemed like Lanning and Smart decided to do something different. Our overall defensive plan seemed oddly bad. Why? Was Lanning distracted by the Oklahoma job possibility? Why such a bizarre defensive lapse for a team that seemed to come up with good strategies all season?

#2 - When it came down to about 7 minutes to go, commentators began noting that Kirby was going to need to start using timeouts. By 3 or 4 minutes, they couldn't believe he still had not called a timeout. It was puzzling. I'm not sure he ever did. It was almost as though he had given up on the notion that our offense could pull off scoring a couple of times even if we got the ball back with 7 minutes left in the game. Did anyone else notice this? Maybe he recognized the futility?