Alabama Football and the historical precedent of good teams that can’t run the ball

Dec 6, 2025; Atlanta, GA, USA; Alabama Crimson Tide running back Daniel Hill (4) rushes during the second quarter against the Georgia Bulldogs during the 2025 SEC Championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-Imagn Images | Dale Zanine-Imagn Images Alabama was bad at running the ball in 2025. It’s been one of the main talking points for the last 8 months across both local and national sports conversations.

The committee kept moving the Tide around in their rankings based on a lack of 100-yard rushing games. And then once the season ended in disappointment, the coaches have fielded questions about the run game in every press conference, and every national preview article or power ranking mention the Tide’s lack of run game in 2025. The optimistic Alabama fans have looked at the coaching changes, OL changes, and incoming running backs as reasons for hope, while the negative fans have looked no further than retaining offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb as a reason for doubt.

But rather than thinking about Alabama specifically, I wanted to take a look back at the last 10 years of college football to see if there have been any other teams to wind up in Alabama’s shoes – and if so, what happened the next year?Now, for every statistical exercise, you have to make cutoffs. So, for the rules of the road, as well as full transparency, here are the conditions:The team had to finish in the bottom 20 in the country in rushing PPA, excluding garbage time.

The team finished the season ranked in the top 25 (using ESPN’s standings tab)PPA is a metric from CollegeFootballData.com. It essentially measures the predicted points added per play for the team throughout the year.

Check out this post if you want a more in-depth explanation. To put things bluntly, there haven’t been too many examples of teams having good records while rushing the ball as poorly as Alabama did last year. Interestingly, both Alabama AND Oklahoma did just that in 2025, and both made the