I suspect Oregon is ranked ahead of Bama because of flash and scoring offense. And partly because of the Heisman hype Bo Nix has gotten all season. Even though they scored 81 against a high school team to inflate their numbers, their lowest scoring output was 33 points in the loss to Washington. Bama has scored under 30 points in 5 games. I think that is holding us down.
I made a similar comment yesterday.
For 40 years now, I've watched pundit after pundit be overly impressed with these high octane, high-scoring offenses to the point they shout down any rational discourse. I first became aware of this in 1983, when there was a season-long argument over whether Nebraska (who set the then record for most points in a season) or Texas (then in the SWC with the nation's #1 defense) was the better team. And, of course, because of the bowl agreements, they never met on the field.
But there were two groups of writers at the time:
1) the VERY LARGE group dazzled by "man, nobody can stop Nebraska, they have the best QB and RB and WR in the country"
2) the VERY TINY group that said, "they only scored 14 points against OK State and only 28 against Oklahoma, two teams with legit defenses.
Texas then went out and faced Georgia, gave up 10 points...and lost the Cotton Bowl and potential national championship. Nebraska went out and fell behind Miami, 17-0, and lost the Orange Bowl playing for a win.
After all that...Nebraska still got some first-place votes for the championship despite losing while Texas got zero, even though Auburn (whom Texas blew out) got 7.
I use the baseball parallel - it's like when you have a baseball player who has ONE thing he does VERY WELL (like Aaron Judge hits a lot of homers) and people cannot understand that a guy who does a lot of things PRETTY GOOD but not superstar-like is just as good sometimes a better actual player.
The voters can look at a high-powered offense and be dazzled.
It takes coaches to point out why a great defense is actually better.