ATLANTAYou don't have to like it. In fact, they probably prefer you don't.You don't have the like that your offense will, at some point, allow a touchdown to the Alabama Crimson Tide defense. Or that the team's backup running back, Bo Scarbrougha 228-pound sculpted ball of rageis capable of carrying your starting defenders great distances by his lonesome.You don't have to like any of it. Not the unrelenting flow of talent that enters and exits the program year after year. Not the expression your quarterback makes when he is terrorized for three consecutive hours by men moving far too fast for their size.Not the way Alabama glows when it gets its opponent to play its brand of ball, an unmistakable, ugly game that it has mastered after all these years.You especially don't have to like that Alabama will play for its fifth national championship in eight seasons on Jan. 9 in Tampa, Florida, after squeezing the life out of Washington slowly and deliberately in the College Football Playoff on Saturday."Savages. Goons. Monsters. Beasts," linebacker Reuben Foster said after the game. "We're caged animals."Or perhaps you do like this brand of ball. Or at least you should.The latest installment, a 24-7 suffocating Peach Bowl victory over Washington, the No. 4 team in the nation, felt somewhat familiar.It's what it did to Texas and LSU in national championship games, and it's become a New Year's Eve tradition of sorts for Alabama to play a game its way.In its past two semifinal contests, the Alabama defense has allowed a combined seven points. It limited Michigan State and Washington to a combined 73 yards rushing on 55 carries.This has and always will be the identity of the team, but there's more to it.The opposing quarterbacks' Not much better. Former Michigan State signal-caller Connor Cook and Washington quarterback Jake Browning threw for a combined 360 yards and four interceptions in the two games.Linebacker Ryan Anderson returned one of Browning's interceptions for a touchdown,the 15th non-offensive score of the season for Alabama.Anderson is the ninth Tide defender to score a touchdown this year, which is almost unfathomable."It's what we pride ourselves on," Alabama defensive tackle Da'Ron Payne said following the win. "Every game they try to score."This trend is no longer a trend, despite the expectation that it will have to give way at some point. Nearly every game, it holds true.Even when Alabama's defense looks vulnerable, as it did early on, there is an expectation it will recover.When Washington took an early 7-0 lead on a brilliant 16-yard touchdown pass from Browning to Dante Pettis, there was never any panic. Perhaps there were a few uneasy moments from a Georgia Dome crowd that was predominantly red, but it didn't last long.By halftime, after Anderson crossed the goal line to help give his team a 17-7 lead heading into the locker room, order had been restored.No, the offense never looked fully comfortable. Even this part of the result was so very 'Bama. This was not a Deshaun Watson-esque offensive masterpiece, nor was it expected to be.Alabama's success has never been about its offensive perfection, and it never will be under Nick Saban.Quarterback Jalen Hurts passed for 57 yards. He threw only 14 passes, completing seven. The true freshman looked the part of a true freshman tossed into one of the biggest games of his life.Enter Scarbrough, the backup running back who looks nothing like a normal reserve. He is a running back in a linebacker's body, and one of the many reasons Alabama does not operate by normal expectations.After battling through injuries throughout much of his career, the redshirt sophomore seized his moment. After servingmainly as a spectator for Derrick Henry's weekly demolition derbies last season,Scarbrough created plenty of his own wreckage.Many of his 180 rushing yards came after contact, which is to be expected given his physical gifts.His 68-yard touchdown run at the beginning of the fourth quarter featured an extraordinary combination of speed, power and wiggle. It extended the Tide's lead to a point where the outcome was almost assumed.This, too, was very 'Bama."It hurts, man," Alabama tight end O.J. Howard said of Scarbrough. "When you have to tackle a guy like that for four quarters, it wears you down. That's anybody. I think you could tell by the end of the game they really didn't want to tackle him."It is not normal for a team's backup running back to be the best player on the best team in a given night. It's not normal for this backup to be nearly 230 pounds, either.It's not normal to win comfortably with 57 passing yards. Or at least it's not supposed to be.It is not normal to make a team like Washingtona quality opponent with future NFL players scattered throughout the fieldlook helpless for the vast majority of 60 minutes.In many ways, however, this is precisely what Alabama is. This is its normal.It's why performances such as these are no longer celebrated the way they used to be. They are expected.It's why another trip to the national championship game is almost assumed. This is the bar.It's never been about touchdowns or points or a single player. It's never been about the score, either."When you're in that huddle, there ain't nobody special," Saban said following the win." Everybody's together. Everybody has respect for each other, and everybody appreciates the job that everybody else does. And you can go a long way in doing a lot of things, and you may never find that. You may never find that. But you find it when you play football and you play together as a team."That's not how it's supposed to be for so many. But for the Crimson Tide, celebrating their second CFP National Championship Game trip in as many years, it's who they are.That might not sit well with some. Perhaps you're bored by it all: the winning and the accolades and that unique style that no other team can duplicate.But there is something beautiful about how different it is and how familiar it can be all at once. There is something spectacular about a group of superior athletesa new collection of monstersdoing the same thing season after season.And whether you like it or not is of no importance to them. The Tide decided on who and what they would be long ago.Best to embrace it while you can. Or don't. They'll be pleased regardless.
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