Alabama won their third-straight SEC Championship game Saturday, capping an undefeated regular season with a televised 54-16 beat-down of a good Florida Gators team in Atlanta.

The Tide was dominant and merciless, just as it's been all year. Nick Saban's annual maniacal search for pigskin perfection has rolled over better teams and worse teams this campaign, but make no mistake, the Tide have rolled over all and it seemed to become stronger as the season progressed.

Alabama will be the No. 1 team in the College Football Playoff and will play in Atlanta again on New Year's Eve, taking on the No. 4 team in the College Football Playoff in the Peach Bowl.

And if you're one of the other three teams in that playoff, you're praying you are not selected as the No. 4 seed.

Even Clemson, which narrowly lost to the Tide in the title game last year, would certainly not want to face Alabama in the first-round of the playoff, even if it meant playing a game much closer to home. Atlanta is two hours away from the Clemson campus and a major hub for Clemson alumni, but no self-respecting team would desire a match-up with Alabama if it could possibly be avoided. Saban's team can make a trip to Arizona and a match-up with Ohio State seem like the better option than a de-facto home game.

Why the fear? Because Alabama didn't play anything close to a good game on offense -- by their standards -- on Saturday and they still won by 38.

This is Saban's best defense ever, but the offense is also an elite unit, despite having a true freshman quarterback at the helm.

The Tide offensive line is one of the best in the nation, Calvin Ridley is one of the best receivers in the nation, O.J. Howard is one of the best tight ends in the nation, and the backfield goes five-deep with NFL talent.

But more important than the talent on the offensive side of the ball -- the Alabama offense has been a more dynamic unit in 2016. The power run game that the Tide is known for is still present, but it's complimented by a spread-option attack that Saban must secretly despise.

Remember in 2012 when he asked about spread offenses: "Is this what we want football to be?"

Whether Saban wants it or not, his team, through offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin, is using the head coach's bugaboo to flummox opposition.

Make no mistake, the Tide can be beaten -- all teams comprised of 18 to 23-year-olds (even if they seem like 10-year NFL veterans) can -- but the ways to do it are less numerous than even a year ago.

That list wasn't long then.

The best chance a team stands of putting up points on Alabama -- and this is not a new thing -- is to have a freewheeling quarterback who can move both inside and out of the pocket and has a gunslinger mentality on deep downfield passes.

Diagnosing coverages and blitzes at the line of scrimmage against Alabama is a fool's errand -- Saban's proprietary pattern-match cornerbacks, who are playing both zone and man-to-man on most every play and a defensive line that shifts between three and four-man fronts won't give a quarterback many hints at what's coming.

The Alabama defensive dynamism on has to be matched, and in a sport where risk is managed first, second, and third on offense, there are few players who can reach that level and not jeopardize turning the ball over.

Lamar Jackson isn't going to be in the playoff, and while DeShaun Watson, J.T. Barrett, and Jake Browning are all wonderful quarterbacks, they probably don't fit the bill. You need a Johnny Manziel or who-cares-go-deep Chad Kelly.

And even if one or two of those quarterbacks can find a way to put points up against Alabama, do their defenses stand a chance against that defense, littered with first-round talent?

More and more, it seems as if the College Football Playoff will be a coronation for the Crimson Tide.

Dieter Kurtenbach is a Senior Writer for Fox Sports. He is accessible on the Internet at dieter.kurtenbach@fox.com, @dkurtenbach, or Facebook.com/DieterKurtenbach.