By Wendell Barnhouse | wendell@big12sports.com
Big 12 Sports.com CorrespondentPASADENA, Calif. - It was a play he had run hundreds of time. Moving to his left, Colt McCoy faked an option pitch and turned it up field into the Alabama defensive line. There was no yardage to gain on the Longhorns' fifth play of the game.
The Texas senior quarterback was stood up and stopped (official tackle, linebacker Cory Reamer). But then Crimson Tide sophomore Marcell Dareus, listed as a second team defensive end, unloaded his 6-4, 296 pounds into McCoy's right side. A clean, hard hit that McCoy's nervous system couldn't handle.
The winningest quarterback in Division I-A history didn't get the chance to end his career in glorious fashion. McCoy's right shoulder isn't bionic. It failed. Nothing but humanity there. The running play would be McCoy's last. After x-rays determined his right shoulder was inoperable, McCoy spent the second half on the sidelines wearing shoulder pads that had no purpose.
"It was a freak injury, it was like I had slept on my arm for an hour," said McCoy, who completed both of his passes for nine yards and carried once - the ill-fated running play. "It was just dead, I had no strength. It wasn't a question of being tough or playing through pain. It's not pain. The hit didn't hurt. I just got up and my arm was completely numb. My arm strength and accuracy was gone.
"I'm not hurt. I don't feel like I'm injured. The doctor said I'll probably be fine in a day or two. To have this taken away like this. … I'm totally in shock."
That comment was followed five seconds of silence, the reporters surrounding McCoy in the UT locker room looking at their shoes.
Without McCoy, the Longhorns' offense with freshman Garrett Gilbert at the helm, had limited options against the Crimson Tide's voracious defense. Without McCoy, UT's defense was forced to try for a perfect game - Alabama ran with impunity knowing that the opponent was playing with its best weapon tied behind its back.
Without McCoy, we were robbed a potentially great BCS National Championship Game. The Crimson Tide (14-0) became the fourth consecutive Southeastern Conference team to win a BCS title with their 37-21 victory over Texas (13-1) in the Rose Bowl Thursday night.
Would the outcome have been different if McCoy hadn't been hurt? Would the Longhorns been able to convert a bumbling, baffling start by Alabama into more than two field goals? Would the UT passing game been successful finding open receivers for some big plays? Would Alabama's play calling and QB Greg McElroy changed under pressure if challenged by Texas moving the scoreboard?
Three words: We'll never know.
What we do know is this: Trailing 24-6 at halftime, the Longhorns played as valiant a second half as you'll see. Gilbert hit senior receiver Jordan Shipley (10 receptions for 122 yards) for touchdowns of 44 and 28 yards plus completed a pass for a two-point conversion that pulled Texas to within 24-21 with 6:15 remaining.
"I think everybody on our team believed we were gonna win the game," Shipley said. "We've established the belief we can come back. Even with that play at the end of the first half, we thought we would have a chance in the second half."
The Longhorns got the ball back with 3:14 and two timeouts needing a field goal to tie. But an unblocked Eryk Andrews sacked Gilbert, forcing a fumble that resulted in Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram's second TD of the night. Ingram finished with 116 yards on 22 carries and is just the second Heisman winner to also hold the BCS crystal football.
"I didn't know their quarterback was hurt but I didn't see any fear in their eyes after he couldn't play," said Dareus, who along with Ingram was selected as the game's outstanding players. "I saw determination."
Those in crimson among the 94,906 in the Rose Bowl will celebrate the Crimson Tide's first national championship since 1992. The burnt orange fans might think the Alabama title needs to be equipped with an asterisk.
Alabama won the toss but decided to receive instead of kickoff (if you're a dominant defense, don't you want the other team to start with the ball, establish a defensive mind set?). Forced to punt, the Tide tried a fake punt (?) but punter's P.J. Fitzgerald's throw was intercepted by an alert Blake Gideon.
That set up Texas' first possession, McCoy's injury and a Hunter Lawrence chip shot field goal when the Longhorns couldn't score on four runs from inside the 'Bama two. Texas then recovered a short, high kickoff when the Tide looked befuddled. That resulted in another field goal and a 6-0 lead.
Again, with a healthy McCoy, would the Longhorns have blitzed to a 14-0 lead, then ganged up on the Tide running game and force McElroy (6-of-11, 58 yards, five sacks) into a throwing game?
And again, we'll never know. McCoy, though, thinks he knows.
"We were in an up-tempo offense, we were moving the ball," McCoy said of his first and only series. "The way we had prepared, I knew exactly what they were doing, we had 'em on their heels. We had 'em exactly where we wanted 'em. I would have made a huge difference ... We were about to dominate the game."
McCoy's coach also had a grasp on what might have been. Outside the Texas lockerroom, Mack Brown told Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com: "It wouldn't even have been close."
Faced with poor field position plus knowing that it had to keep Alabama in the teens on the scoreboard, the Longhorns' defense played valiantly. True enough, Tide freshman Trent Richardson went untouched on a 49-yard scoring romp and the Alabama ground game produced 205 yards - 143 more than UT's top-ranked rush defense typically allows.
Coach Will Muschamp's defense asked for no quarter and gave none. Three of Alabama's touchdowns were the result of turnovers - an interception returned for a TD, a 2-yard drive set up by a sack and fumble recovery and the final six the result of another interception.
It was hard to tell who was more dejected - McCoy or Gilbert, who kneeled in despair on the sideline late in the first half. In perhaps a questionable play call, Texas tried a shovel pass on second and one with 15 seconds remaining in the first half. The pass was tipped several times before Dareus - that guy, again - grabbed it, barreled through Gilbert's tackle then spun out of another tackle. His 28-yard TD return made it 24-6.
"We thought the shovel pass was the safest thing we thought might squirt for some yards," Brown said. "I've never seen one of those intercepted and never saw one returned for a touchdown. It was one of those nights for us.
"We gave up three plays in the first half that really killed us - the long run (by Richardson), the intercepted slant pass (that cost us a field goal try) and the interception on the shovel pass. You have five turnovers in a national championship game, you're not gonna win."
Gilbert finished 15-of-40 for 186 yards and four interceptions. Next year, he'll be the Longhorns' starting quarterback. Thursday night, he was thrust into an untenable situation. Other than Shipley, UT's receivers seemed shell-shocked by McCoy's absence. Before Gilbert's first interception, he lofted a strike to Malcolm Williams at the goal line. Despite double coverage, he got his hands on the pass ... but couldn't haul it in.
"I feel bad to put him in there in that situation against Alabama in the National Championship game," Brown said. "Here he was completely cold. We just told him to keep playing."
On opening day of this season, Oklahoma quarterback and 2008 Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford suffered an injury to his right shoulder. He reinjured the shoulder against Texas. And then McCoy's right shoulder breaks down on the final day of the season. Not the kind of book ends you would put on your shelf.
"I would have done anything to be able to go out there with the guys I've gone to war with for the past four years," McCoy said. "To see them fightin' without me, nobody's ever seen that before, we've never experienced it. … I can't believe it."
Ending a brilliant college career with a national championship loss is depressing enough. Having your career end with a defeat in which an injury is your conquering opponent is devastatingly depressing.
"This is so tough. He did everything right. He didn't come back for awards or the Heisman. He came back for this game," Brad McCoy, Colt's dad, told Bruce Feldman of ESPN.com.
"I had worked my whole career to be on a stage like this, to play for a national championship, be on this stage," McCoy said, his words coming slowly has he continued to try and explain the inexplicable. "I know I would have made a difference. That's the tough part."
As John Greenleaf Whittier put it: For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, "It might have been."