Alabama meticulously devours Washington to win the 2016 Peach Bowl semifinal

Alabama will play for college football’s national championship for the second year in a row The Crimson Tide beat Washington, 24-7 at a Peach Bowl semifinal in Atlanta on Saturday.

Alabama will face either Ohio State or Clemson for the title, depending on which team wins the Fiesta bowl later on Saturday in Arizona (7 p.m. ET, ESPN). The championship game is set for Jan. 9 in Tampa.

Alabama struck in fits and starts, slowly devouring its prey until the Huskies were out of clock and out of plausible opportunities to come back. The decisive blow was Alabama running back Bo Scarbrough’s second touchdown of the day, on a 68-yard jaunt that looked impossible and felt inevitable all at once.

That made the score 24-7 early in the fourth quarter. Alabama blowing a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter is not something that is going to happen on this Earth, and it didn’t on Saturday. The Tide were in the clear.

Washington did what it could to stay afloat in the first half. The Huskies scored the game’s first points seven minutes after it started, when Jake Browning found Dante Pettis for an ultra-smooth 16-yard touchdown in the corner of the end zone.

Meanwhile, Washington’s punter was regularly destroying footballs. The Huskies kept themselves somewhere close to striking distance, which is the best hope against this kind of opposition. They should be proud of pushing so hard, at least to start.

But Alabama did what Alabama does. Scarbrough mashed the UW defense for a game-tying touchdown three minutes after Washington took the lead.

After another Alabama field goal, Tide linebacker Ryan Anderson scored the team’s nation-leading 11th defensive touchdown, right before halftime. He picked off Browning and ran the ball back 26 yards, staking Alabama to a 17-7 edge at halftime.

Alabama was overwhelming, and then it was overwhelming some more. The Tide also got some breaks, like when Anderson got away with causing a Washington fumble by clapping to emulate UW’s pre-snap cadence.

Washington did a lot of good things in the first two quarters. At the half, Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts had produced little in the passing game, and Alabama was averaging just more than 4 yards per carry. That the Huskies still trailed by 10 demonstrates how tough Bama is. Things felt less close after the half.

In the end, the Huskies gave Bama a good fight. But they never really threatened to win the game, because putting Alabama into a corner is almost impossible.

Washington’s offense crossed the 50-yard line when it notched that score-opening touchdown. It didn’t get across again until the last two minutes of the game, after the Washington defense forced a turnover on downs at its own 45. Progress was halting.

Alabama was playing in its third Playoff in three years of the event, the only program to have made every Playoff. The Tide tore through the SEC to get here, going 13-0 in a conference where every other team lost at least four games. It was a generally down year for the SEC, but the Tide were the exception, and they entered this game on as dominant a run as they’ve ever been on under Nick Saban. They’re still on it.

Playoff newcomer Washington got here by winning the Pac-12 with a single loss to Rose Bowl participant USC. The Huskies hadn’t gotten anywhere near this far in the brief Playoff era, but they faced high expectations this season, because Chris Petersen’s good at this and had a talented roster coming back. The Huskies lived up to them, and they gave their fans a remarkable season. This ending doesn’t spoil that.

But this was Alabama’s day. Now the Tide are one win from two titles in a row and five in eight years, with a chance to make the best dynasty in history even better.