Just over a month ago Alabama defenders emerged from the locker room at Arkansas half in a daze.

Starting safety Deionte Thompson almost sounded crushed after the Razorbacks put up 405 yards and 31 points on the Crimson Tide. Never mind the 34-point win, that wasn’t what this defense typically does.

“We're Alabama,” nose tackle Quinnen Williams explained that afternoon, “but we're not perfect."

Four games later, the Tide defense is back.

Recording consecutive shutouts of SEC teams for the first time since 1980 represents the opposite end of that emotional spectrum.

The Tide had the nation’s No. 49 rush defense after allowing 172 yards to Arkansas back on Oct. 6. That’s a steep fall for a group that led the country the three previous seasons in that discipline.

Well, Alabama is back up to No. 7 after a third straight lockdown performance. The Mississippi State rushing attack that entered Saturday ranked 20th averaging 230.8 yards a game managed just 44 against Alabama in 30 tries. LSU had just 12 yards the previous week after taking a No. 43-ranked rushing offense into the game with a 190.6-yard average.

“I think first of all we're making a lot fewer mental errors,” Nick Saban said Monday. “I think we've simplified things a little bit. We just helped the players develop some confidence in what they're doing.”

This was a group that had to replace first-round picks at all three levels from the 2017 defense. A disclaimer was attached to that side of the ball entering the season knowing how much had to be replaced from the national championship-winning unit.

There were a few rocky moments -- allowing 393 yards and 23 points to Texas A&M included -- before things turned around the week after Arkansas against Missouri. The nation’s No. 17 total offense was limited to one touchdown and a season-low 212 total yards in the Tide’s 39-10 win.

In all, the last four Alabama opponents rushed for an average of 39.3 yards a game. Both LSU and Mississippi State failed to hit 200 total yards in the shutout Alabama wins.

Only Tennessee threw for more than 200 yards in that same four-game span in which the opposition averaged 169.5 yards through the air.

The Tide is now top-10 in three of the four major statistical measures. Only the passing numbers fall outside that window at No. 23. It’s tied for the national lead in scoring defense with Clemson (12.7 points a game).

The defensive shutout streak is up to 152 minutes and 18 seconds of football going all the way back to the second quarter of the Oct. 20 win at Tennessee. It coincides with a drop off in offensive production that saw the nation’s once-top scoring team slip below 30 points in consecutive games after falling below 50 just once in the eight previous games.

The average margin of victory still stands at 36 points and nobody’s come closer than 24.

Alabama is doing that by making an impact in the opposing backfield. It’s checking in at No. 7 in tackles for loss (82) and No. 3 in sacks (36.0).

“Everybody getting used to what they’re supposed to do, playing their role and playing their roll well, the right way and all the time,” Alabama defensive lineman Isaiah Buggs said. “That’s the difference between then and now.”

Alabama faces The Citadel, a 4-5 team at the Football Championship Subdivision level at 11 a.m. CT Saturday. The Bulldogs present a different challenge in the form of a wishbone offense this defense hasn’t seen in some time.

And Saban still found some areas of concern exiting the shutout win over Mississippi State.

“When we had issues in the last game we made a couple of mistakes in the secondary,” Saban said, “we got lucky in the red zone when they got the delay of game, and we had some missed tackles on the long run. So, we need to continue to focus on those types of things.”

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.