Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart sat down with 680 The Fan on Monday and discussed the Crimson Tide's loss to the Ohio State Buckeyes in the first-ever College Football Playoff. The Buckeyes defeated Alabama by a score of 42-35, and Smart attributed Ohio State's quarterback situation as one of the main reason the Crimson Tide defense struggled.

“I’ve coached about 15 years – it was the most different situation we’ve ever had because of the quarterback situation,” Smart said. “So you’ve got one quarterback on tape (Braxton Miller), then you’ve got another quarterback on tape (J.T. Barrett), then you’ve got one game on the quarterback (Cardale Jones). And looking back, we have exit interviews with our players, and when you look in hindsight, I asked every kid, Landon Collins, Nick Perry, Jarrick Williams, the really smart seniors on our team, I said ‘Where did we go wrong? What did we do wrong?’

“All three of them said they did not respect the quarterback, and our job as the coaches was to make them respect the quarterback. Well they heard from the media, they heard from ESPN, they heard from everybody that he was a third-string quarterback. How can a third-string quarterback beat Alabama? We didn’t promote him enough and they didn’t value his talents enough, and he came in – we thought he was a really good passer, well he ran the ball well, too. We had not seen him run the ball – and not a runner like Blake (Sims) and not a runner like their other guy, just big.

“This guy was just lumbering and big and ran through arm tackles, even on our big, physical defense.”

Smart also said the heavy dosage of running back Ezekiel Elliott, mixed with Jones' surprising play, had a lot to do with the uncharacteristic play from his Alabama defense. And he knew in the early goings of the contest that it would be a long night.

“I knew early,” Smart said. “See, everybody’s talking about the score, we were leading, but we weren’t leading. We had not slowed them down. We had two red area stops, which were six points, could have been 14. We had a turnover, we stripped the ball. We had not slowed them down, and I’m thinking this could be 21 but it’s six, 21-6, could be 21-21. And then hey score right before the half, which we thought was deadly. They had a good two-minute drive and scored, and I knew we were in trouble.”

So what does a loss like that in the first-ever, four-team playoff do to a perennial program like the Crimson Tide? It forces it to call former Ohio State offensive coordinator Tom Herman, who is now the head coach of the Houston Cougars, and bring him to Tuscaloosa for a visit to pick his brain.

“It makes you look at everything,” Smart said. “I’ll tell you the best thing we did, and I give Coach (Nick) Saban a lot credit, we went directly to (Herman). We flew him in. We said “Hey, look, we want to meet with you. You know us better than anybody. You spent four weeks getting ready for us. What’s our tendencies? What do we do wrong? What do you think?’ And he was honest with us, he just told us what he thought. It was very valuable for us.”

Smart said he didn't hesitate to call Herman, picking up his phone immediately after the Sugar Bowl. And Nick Saban didn't waste much time, either, making it a priority to bring Herman to town as a part of his annual coaching clinic on campus.

“Coach is really good about that,” Smart said. “Coach Saban’s from an NFL mold where you go and you spend time figuring out who knows you best. That guy did a great job attacking us, and we spent a lot of time with him. And even Lane (Kiffin) met with him offensively to get some ideas for us, as well.”

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