Reuben Foster wasn't happy.

Yes, there were smiles in the Alabama locker room after beating Washington 24-7 in the Peach Bowl, but it came with a few emotional moments late.

Unsportsmanlike conduct flags littered the field as the Crimson Tide and Huskies mixed it up a few times late. Foster said he was surrounded by the whole Washington offensive line at one point. He left the field before the game ended to control his emotions.

"I was very surprised, man," Foster said. "If you're about to lose, take it as a man. Don't cheap shot somebody just to get them kicked out of the game."

But what happened?

"They was grumpy," Foster said. "They wanted payback, I guess."

There's two sides to every story and Washington players had a different perspective on the matter.

"It looked like they were starting to take cheap shots on our guys," Husky offensive lineman Kaleb McGary said. "What are you going to do when you see your little brother getting picked on? Are you going to let him lay on the floor and bleed or are you going to tell them to stop? You're going to take care of the problem."

There were four flags thrown for unsportsmanlike conduct in the closing moments -- three on Alabama and two after Minkah Fitzpatrick's interception that effectively ended the game.

"I got cheap-shot," said Washington receiver John Ross. "But it's football. You get back up, and you live."

Safety Ronnie Harrison also left the field early to cool emotions.

"Yeah," he said. "Reuben is like my brother and they had like five lineman around him slinging him everywhere so I was trying to come help."

Jonathan Allen got one of the flags for the first scuffle.

"The thing for me is I'm trying to defend my players," he said. "I'm not going to let somebody take advantage of my players."

Foster said he had to remind himself not to overreact because an ejection would have impacted his availability for the championship game.

"Of course I got fired up," he said. "I had four guys around me and the referees weren't doing nothing about it."

Foster also said it wasn't an issue that started in the games closing moments.

"They were saying a lot. I can't say what they were saying but just know they were saying a lot of disrespectful stuff. It was my fault that I let it get to me and I'm sorry for that. It's not going to happen again because I know what their mindset is on. I should have realized what their mindset was on and that was to get us ejected out of the game."