Malachi Moore galloped across the grass in the heart of Bryant-Denny Stadium. He was proud of the work Alabama had done Saturday, so he kept repeating it.

“Sixty minutes! Sixty minutes!”

The Crimson Tide finally played a full game, all four quarters, 60 minutes. This time against LSU, beating the rival Tigers 42-28 behind another fourth-quarter defensive shutout. Pregame, Moore wanted to foreshadow what was coming so he wrote ‘John Wick’ across his eyeblack. Why? Moore wasn’t made available postgame, but his teammates were able to explain.

“I mean, anybody that watches ‘John Wick’ knows,” fellow senior Justin Eboigbe said. “That’s a mentality, you know what I mean?”

The “John Wick” tetralogy stars Keanu Reeves in bloody action movies about reclaiming yourself through violent means while on a quest for revenge. For Alabama football in 2023, it’s not a terrible comparison. The Tide’s national title hopes were snuffed out last season after losses to Tennessee and LSU. Multiple players cited those games as personal motivators from offseason training to the Week 8 and 10 matchups, respectively.

If the back-to-back statement wins — or the postgame chirp from Nick Saban, or the record-setting four touchdowns from Jalen Milroe or the Wick-branded eyeblack on Moore — didn’t make it obvious, Alabama played with a swagger against LSU it had sporadically flirted with all season. The Tide (8-1, 7-0 Southeastern Conference) made some of its biggest improvements in two rivalry games and is now one SEC win, or Ole Miss loss, from booking a trip to Atlanta.

“I didn’t know he was gonna wear it actually before the game started. I’m looking at him and see ‘John Wick.’ I said, ‘Oh, I see what you on today,’” cornerback Terrion Arnold said. “I was on what he was on.”

The defeats last year in Knoxville and Baton Rouge were textbook college football classics. Tennessee ended a 15-year run with a 40-yard field goal. Brian Kelly went for two in overtime and shocked the Tide for its second loss. Players avoided storming fans and departed into emotional postgame locker rooms. In reflection, team leaders said the games shouldn’t have come down to the final play. Alabama could’ve been better prepared and avoided the wrong side of an upset.

After the Tide’s rocky 2-1 start to this season, Saban noted how constant growth was the goal. His team eventually responded, hitting another gear in Week 4 against Ole Miss. Season-long mistakes didn’t disappear but were better managed. Milroe has reduced his turnover rate and rallied down 13-0 against the Vols before not committing a giveaway against the Tigers. The defense didn’t allow a point in the fourth quarter after allowing both offenses to score easily on their first drives.

“Even though you can say, ‘Well, they had some really good plays.’ Yeah, they did. They have some really good players. But our guys fought. They competed,” Saban said. “Really proud of them. Probably as close of a complete game as we’ve played all year, and we needed to play a game like that.

“I think that our team has showed tremendous resiliency all year long. They’ve always been able to make plays at critical times in games when they needed to make them. They got stops against (Texas) A&M. They played really well in the second half against Ole Miss. They came back against Tennessee. Got a lot of stops. This is because of leadership, but because of the competitive spirit of the group as well.”

Since the 2011 game of the century, Alabama had only beaten LSU when it held the Tigers under 18 points, 10-0, 0-2 when the Tigers scored more. LSU entered Tuscaloosa with the top-rated offense in points and yards per game. Yet, the Tide held them to 478 yards, the Tigers’ lowest output since its season-opening loss against Florida State.

Alabama limited LSU to four-of-nine on third down and the Tigers failed two fourth-down attempts. LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels ran for 163 yards and threw for 219 more, bruising Tide defenders on scrambles while missing a chunk of the fourth quarter in concussion protocol.

For Arnold, who admitted he was hurting a little postgame, it was a full-circle moment. A year ago, while the Tide lost to LSU, Arnold was in the hospital for part of the game with the flu. Arnold caught the game’s only interception on a tipped pass on the first play of the fourth quarter.

“Like they say, man, that get back. We suffered,” Arnold said before catching himself. “I won’t say we suffered. But we had this game, thinking about this game in fourth quarter (training program) this time in January and stuff.

“Just to watch my team go through that and not be able to be there for them and be a part of that? It honestly broke my heart. I just made a vow that when I get in this game and get in this moment, I feel like I gotta go out and give my team my best.”

He and the rest of Alabama did.

Nick Alvarez is a reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @nick_a_alvarez or email him at [email protected].