Kenyan Drake temporarily broke away from the craziness.

While many of his teammates celebrated wildly behind him, Alabama's senior running back shared a long hug around midfield with the Tide's primary orthopedic surgeon, Lyle Cain of the world-renowned Andrews Sports Medicine and Orthopaedic Center.

Alabama head football athletic trainer Jeff Allen was beside them with his left hand on Drake's right arm.

Tide director of behavioral medicine Ginger Gilmore and assistant athletic trainer Jeremy Gsell were there too, looking on from behind Cain before each getting their own hugs from Drake.

It was a special, private moment following the Tide's national championship game win over Clemson, one more meaningful because of everything Drake had overcome to reach that point with the help of those four people and other members of Alabama's medical staff.

Fifteen months after suffering a broken and dislocated ankle that ended his junior season and two months after breaking his right arm against Mississippi State, Drake was one of the stars of the game, returning a kick 95 yards for a touchdown to give the Tide a 38-27 lead midway through the fourth quarter.

A Clemson player caught up to Drake just before the end zone and attempted to push him out of bounds, but Drake dove and reached the ball across the goal line for a critical touchdown with the right arm Cain had to operate on just two months earlier.

'The best medical staff in the country'

Alabama has one of the most talent-rich rosters in college football and is led by one of the greatest and most successful coaches in college football history, Nick Saban.

The Tide also has the benefit of having what Saban said he believes is "the best medical staff in the country."

You would be hard-pressed to find any medical team in the country or even in the NFL doing a better job of getting players back from serious injuries and preventing avoidable injuries altogether.

Drake is one of many recent success stories.

"I think Dr. Cain, Dr. Andrews, that whole group does a fantastic job," Saban said. "They have a great national reputation for what they do with professional athletes. And I think that helps us have the quality people on our medical staff, like Jeff Allen and Ginger and Jeremy and all those guys, not only do they do a great job developing trust with the athletes, but they do a great job with rehab and really just first-class, professional medical attention."

Rapid recovery time

In 2012, Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson returned to practice eight months after suffering a torn ACL and MCL. He played in every game that season and came up just nine yards short of breaking the NFL single-season rushing record.

That was viewed as groundbreaking. Prior to that, it typically took players at least a year to be able to return to game action and additional time to return to previous form.

Even now, it usually takes at least eight or nine months to return to game action following an ACL injury.

But it's become the norm at Alabama for players to get back in six months or less.

Wide receiver Cam Sims suffered a torn ACL and LCL in late March. He also had a small tibia fracture. Doctors originally told him it would take eight to 12 months to recover, but he was back practicing on a limited basis by mid-August and played in the Tide's first game just more than five months after getting hurt.

There are other examples too, like defensive back Eddie Jackson.

Jackson tore his ACL in April 2014. He cried when he first received the diagnosis from Cain, realizing the severity of the injury and thinking he would miss that entire 2014 season. But Jackson played one day short of five months after suffering the injury.

Even before Peterson, there was former Alabama linebacker Dont'a Hightower in 2010, who was fully cleared medically less than six months after suffering a torn ACL and MCL in addition to a torn meniscus.

"If you look at the history of ACL surgery, the biology is the same," Cain said. "It's not that we're doing anything magic per se with ACLs. I think it's the combination of a lot of factors. Certainly, we have a great team with Jeff Allen and his team and physical therapy, and I think the athletes that coach Saban is recruiting to Tuscaloosa have the ability to grow muscle fast. They're elite athletes, and they have the ability to heal. (Renowned orthopedic surgeon James Andrews) has said many times that, 'If you want to make yourself look good as a surgeon you need to operate on a really elite athlete. They'll make you look good.'"

There is more to it, though.

The 'Catapult'

In addition to having people like Cain and Allen who are leaders in their respective fields, Alabama has benefited the last two years from the use of a GPS tracking system from Catapult Sports.

The Catapult system is utilized by 36 colleges, 15 NFL franchises as well as teams in other sports, according to the company's website.

It's been an asset for the Tide with injured players as well as with injury prevention.

A small GPS monitor is attached to every player's shoulder pads for practice. Players will also wear t-shirts with pockets during the summer so the monitors can be used while they go through the team's summer conditioning program.

There are more than 200 data points that can be measured, Allen said. Alabama focuses on four.

1) How many yards does each player run each day?

2) Player load, which Allen said is a "metric that kind of gives you an overall intensity of that particular day."

3) Explosiveness. An explosive movement is moving four or more yards in a second or less. The monitor will keep track of how many times a player does that.

4) Top-end speed in miles per hour.

Allen puts players through movement screening tests four times each year to identify any potential problem areas using the Fusionetics program -- once in January after the season, again in April at the end of spring practice and then again in June and August.

"There's a variety of different tests that are on that," Allen said. "For example, they'll have to do a two-legged body weight squat. And during that squat, I'm watching them and have my computer out and it's giving me different questions to look at. Do their knees go in? Does their back arch? And I'm answering yes or no, yes or no all the way down.

"And then it gives me a score for that. And then I do a one-legged squat, and there's a variety of about seven or eight different tests in this Fusionetics program. Score every one of them and then you get an assessment at the end for your injury risk."

You will get one of three colors.

Green is normal.

Yellow means you are at a higher injury risk than green.

Red means you are at an extreme risk for injury.

Based on the score, an individualized program will be set up for the player with the help of strength and conditioning coach Scott Cochran to correct any movement deficiencies or problem areas.

Said Saban: "I think using the catapult system and using some of the functional movement tests on guys before they ever get injured, all these things contribute to workload, not overuse with players so they can stay healthier for longer and can sustain for longer."

Something else that director of performance nutrition Amy Bragg and the medical staff pay a lot of attention to? Vitamin D levels.

"There's been a lot of studies that show that low Vitamin D levels really can pre-dispose you to injuries, especially soft issue injuries," Allen said, "and we know for a fact that Vitamin D promotes healing. So there's a lot of unanswered questions about it out there, but we know enough about it to know that it's a very important vitamin in the healing process and one that we put a lot of emphasis on."

'The results speak for themselves'

After losing in bowl games each of the previous two seasons, one of the goals for Alabama last year, Allen said, was to "be stronger at the end of the year and to be at our best at the end of the year."

It was.

Rebounding from an early loss to Ole Miss that dropped its record to 2-1, the Tide won nine straight games to advance to the SEC championship game before beating Florida in the SEC title game to clinch a spot in the College Football Playoff semifinals.

A 38-0 win over Michigan State in the semifinals set up a national title game matchup with Clemson, which Alabama won, allowing Drake, Cain, Allen and the other two members of the Tide medical staff to have that special moment on the field inside University of Phoenix Stadium.

"I really felt like we were our best at the end of the year," Allen said. "Certainly in that Michigan State game, that team that came out that night, we were as recovered and as fresh as we had been all year, and it made me so proud to watch those guys, and I think their hard work showed that night for sure.

"Coach (Saban) really put a big emphasis on being at our best at the end of the year, and they really bought into it, and I think the results speak for themselves."