Nick Saban has quite the coaching tree, as numerous assistants eventually moved on to get head coaching gigs. But when those ex-assistants faced off against their former boss, Saban got the best of them. In fact, only two have ever defeated Saban in their past 30 meetings -- Jimbo Fisher of the Texas A&M Aggies in 2021 and Kirby Smart of the Georgia Bulldogs in the 2022 CFP National Championship Game.
Now, there is a third name to add to former assistants to beat Saban, and that's Steve Sarkisian, his former offensive coordinator at Alabama from 2019 until 2020.
One year after Alabama escaped with a 20-19 victory, Sarkisian had the perfect game plan for the Texas Longhorns, which resulted in the 34-24 victory. With that, Sarkisian is Saban's first assistant to beat him at home. In fact, it was also Saban's first double-digit home loss in the regular season since 2003, when his LSU Tigers lost 19-7 to the Florida State Seminoles, per ESPN Stats and Info.
Now, let's take a look at some of the reactions on social media after Alabama suffered its first loss of the season at the hands of Texas.
Best memes and tweets after Texas scores upset win over Alabama
When looking at how Texas was able to score such a huge, statement victory over Alabama, look no further than quarterback Quinn Ewers. Last week, Ewers struggled early on against Rice, with the main critique surrounding him being his inability to connect on deep passes. Well, that wasn't much of an issue for Ewers against Alabama's defense. Out of three of Ewers' passing touchdowns on the game, two of them were beyond 30 yards downfield, a 44-yarder to Xavier Worthy and a 39-yarder to Adonai Mitchell.
Ewers finished his night completing 24-of-38 pass attempts for 349 yards and the aforementioned three touchdowns.
Texas' defense also deserves huge credit, as they were able to take advantage of quarterback Jalen Milroe's mistakes. Two bad throws from Milroe went right into the hands of Jahdae Barron and Jerrin Thompson for interceptions.
With this game in the books, Texas is expected to rise up the AP Top 25 poll for Week 3, while Alabama will tumble quite a bit. Texas will now look to build off of this victory for the rest of the season, starting next week against Wyoming. As for Alabama, they try to get back into the win column next week when they face South Florida.
