BATON ROUGE, La. -- Before Alabama center Barrett Jones trotted onto the field for the No. 1 Crimson Tide's season-defining drive at No. 5 LSU on Saturday night, he offered offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland one final suggestion.

"Hey, don't forget about the screen," Jones told Stoutland.

With about 1½ minutes to play, LSU had a 17-14 lead and was threatening to knock off defending BCS national champion Alabama, which probably would have ended the SEC's hopes of winning a seventh consecutive national title.

Along with most of a record crowd of 93,374 fans at Tiger Stadium, college football fans from Eugene, Ore., to Manhattan, Kan., to South Bend, Ind. (and everywhere else outside the Southeast) were probably roaring for the Tigers to make one more defensive stop.

AJ McCarron's screen pass to T.J. Yeldon sealed the deal for the Crimson Tide. Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

After LSU's Drew Alleman missed a 45-yard field goal with 1:34 to play, the Crimson Tide took possession at their 28-yard line. They probably needed to drive more than 40 yards for a tying field goal attempt or, even better, 72 yards for a winning touchdown.

And they didn't have much time -- or any timeouts -- to do it.

"I just looked at everybody on the sideline," Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron said. "We got down for a minute, but we pulled it together. I told them, 'We do it every Thursday in practice. It doesn't matter how many people are in the stands. The field is still 100 yards long, and we have to go put it in the end zone.'"

That's exactly what the Crimson Tide did in one of the most memorable comebacks in Alabama's storied football history. After McCarron completed three consecutive passes to Kevin Norwood to move the Tide inside LSU's 30-yard line, Stoutland and offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier dialed up the play Jones suggested before running onto the field.

On second-and-10 from the LSU 28, McCarron threw a screen pass to tailback T.J. Yeldon, who dodged a blitzing safety and sprinted into the end zone with 51 seconds to play for an improbable 21-17 victory.

"That last drive was something I'll never forget," Alabama coach Nick Saban said. "They blitzed. When we called it, everybody was saying on the headset, 'I hope they pressure.' Somebody's either got to peel the guy or take him from inside out; everybody else is playing man-to-man. They blitzed."

And Alabama won, keeping alive its dream of becoming the first team to win back-to-back consensus national championships since Nebraska in 1994 and 1995.