The story of Gravedigger, the miracle play that saved the Tide: ‘That’s going to be a part of Alabama history’
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Alex Scarborough, ESPN Staff Writer
AUBURN, Ala. — “Whoa nellie! Whoa nellie!”
Alabama analyst Dean Altobelli shouted so loud in celebration that his words could be heard through the metal door and cinder block walls that separated the visitors locker room from the awaiting media next door.
A few moments later, Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban walked in as his wife, Terry, clapped from her seat in the back row and yelped, “Yay!”
Saban then sat down and tried to explain a win that few could have seen coming.
“So, do I really need to say anything?” Saban asked facetiously.
Yes and no. Because what can you say after what happened here, on the road, against an archrival in a series that has had more than its fair share of miraculous finishes? The Tide looked to be toast, down 24-20 with under a minute left to play, facing an impossible fourth-and-goal from Auburn‘s 31-yard line to save their season and keep their playoff hopes alive.
Then Jalen Milroe took the snap, danced around the pocket and surveyed the field. He waited … and waited … and waited some more, as the Tigers only rushed two defenders.
“I guess if you’re in this long enough,” Saban said, “sometimes it goes against you in the last play of the game, and sometimes you’re fortunate and it goes for you.”
Ten years ago, inside this same cramped makeshift media room, Saban walked through how a would-be game-winning field goal with one second left turned into a 100-plus-yard return and a walk-off win for Auburn. All this time later, he rattled off the mistakes that led to one of the most heartbreaking losses of his career: a blocked kick, a dead ball foul, getting the ball five times inside the opponent’s 25-yard line in the third and fourth quarters and not scoring a single point.
Call what Milroe and Alabama did luck — and Saban did, in part — but like the Kick-Six, there’s more to what happened here on Saturday night.
“I got to admit we had good fortune,” Saban said, “but it still comes down to ability to execute. Somebody had an opportunity to make a play, whether it was their punt returner or [Isaiah Bond] in the end zone and whoever was guarding him.
“So that’s why you play the game.”
Here’s how the play that led to Alabama’s unlikely 27-24 triumph came together:
Alabama cornerback Terrion Arnold: I feel like that went all the way back to the summer. Coach Saban, before we started fall camp, he replayed the play [last season] where Tennessee scored on the kick and the play when LSU scored on the last play. So that was just going through our mind and being cognizant and just focusing and keying in on what we had to do. Honestly, we never lost faith. We prepared for moments like this.
Saban: Believe it or not, we actually practice that play every Friday when we do walk-through and we do special situations. We get in that formation [five receivers and no backs], and everybody runs down the field and runs varying routes in the end zone.
Arnold: Oftentimes when we do it in practice, we don’t want to get guys hurt. So, I mean, we don’t ever really try to make a play on the ball. We let him catch it. And that came into fruition.
Alabama defensive back Malachi Moore: It might’ve paid off.
Saban: You tell [Milroe] they’re only going to rush three guys and sometimes two. … He’s going to have plenty of time. He’s got to pick the guy that he thinks has got the best chance to catch it.
Moore: [Bond] has all the confidence in himself to make a play. He thinks he’s the best wide receiver on the field, and that’s how you should be.
Arnold: Milroe steps up in the pocket. Kool-Aid [McKinstry] is sitting right here. We were like, dang, this kind of reminds me of [two years ago].
Moore: I really didn’t want to watch the play at all. I just looked at our fans [for their reaction].
Arnold: Truth be told, before J-Mil threw the ball, I said a prayer. So in my head, I’m thinking we went to church before the games, so God give us a blessing. It’s kind of like games like this, you always know so much wrong is going to happen. They had a couple of dirty plays like hitting our punter and stuff didn’t go our way. The one with Jermaine [Burton] when I believe his foot was in bounds, and I feel like everybody saw that. So something had to go right.
Offensive lineman JC Latham: My guy gave me a bull rush right at me and then shortly after I got knocked off or something, so I was able to kind of just turn and see where [Milroe] was. He was all the way on the left side of the field and at that point I’m pretty much useless in that situation. I can try to run down the play, but I can’t really do too much. And yeah, so I just kind of saw it all on unfold. And, yeah, it was insane.
Milroe: I saw IB one-on-one. I was like, we going to score.
Saban: IB really kind of got himself in position where there was some room to throw it. He pushed inside, and the DB was inside of him — and then he came back out and Jalen threw it back out to him, and it was a great catch, a great throw.
Bond: I kind of set him up. I saw the ball. He was trailing, so I was sort of leaning into him and then faded — and then just made the play, as y’all saw.
Moore: Once I saw our fans cheering, I knew we did something good.
Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne: He caught it right? Please be in bounds.
Terry Saban (jokingly): I thought touchdown when it was in the air. I called that play.
Alabama linebacker Deontae Lawson: I came in with Jalen and always knew he was a poised guy. That’s how you got to be playing the position he plays, and I’m just so happy for him.
Latham: I said it at media day: [Milroe is] one of the best quarterbacks in the country. He has to potentially be the best quarterback in the country, and he’s just overcome all adversity and done what he has to do. So that’s who he is. He got the chance to show it. I never doubted him for a second.
Milroe: It’s all about never giving up. That was the biggest thing throughout the game and with that play, it was just all about trust. … I’ll never forget this game ever in my life.
Bond: I ain’t going to lie, making that play meant a lot. That’s going to be a part of Alabama history.
Saban: I thought [Milroe] played great in the game. And his progress has transformed our team and our offense — because he is a point guard, and because he is involving everybody in the game. That’s the thing I think he had to learn this year. He’s now become extremely effective at the quarterback position.
Auburn coach Hugh Freeze on the decision not to pressure Milroe: You can second-guess it. You’ve just got to play with vision. We’ve got nine guys back there. Just play with vision, make a play on the ball and knock it down. He felt like he was shoved off, but I couldn’t tell. You can pressure him, and then you’ve got one-on-ones, and they throw it up. You can do that if you want. I like the call. I think we just have to sit back there with vision and knock the ball down.
Auburn linebacker Jalen McLeod: D.J. [James] had a hell of a game. With corners, people just look at that one play. I told him, ‘Look D.J., I would take you again. If you throw that ball up one more time, I’d give you another chance. You had three PBUs [pass breakups] this game. I would take that risk again with you.’ He’s an NFL talent. Sometimes you live with stuff like that.
Auburn got the ball back with 26 seconds left, but an interception by Arnold sealed the win.
Arnold: They had the Kick-Six. I wanted the Pick-Six. But it’s all right.
Saban: I can’t tell you how proud I am of the guys and how good I feel about winning the game. But as a coach, you always look at things like, how did you play? Because we’re going to have to play at a higher level on a more consistent basis if we’re going to have success in the future. And that’s what you always evaluate. That’s the reality check that we all have to make.”
As Alabama loaded onto buses to go home to Tuscaloosa, Crimson Tide director of football operations Ellis Ponder puffed on a victory cigar. Next week, the Tide will play Georgia for the SEC championship.
But that was a matter for another day as members of the equipment staff gathered around a reporter who shot a video of the Milroe-to-Bond touchdown.
“Can I send this to myself?” one of the staffers said, taking the phone and texting it to himself.
But what should he call the video?
Saban was asked what the touchdown play was called, but he couldn’t give it up.
“If the play had a name,” he said. “I wouldn’t tell you what it was.”
But Bond later coughed it up.
“Gravedigger,” he said.
Milroe wasn’t sure about that.
“I don’t know what it’s called,” he said. “But I like it.”
The opening weekend of the 2025 MLB season was taken over by a surprise star — torpedo bats.
The bowling pin-shaped bats became the talk of the sport after the Yankees’ home run onslaught on the first Saturday of the season put it in the spotlight and the buzz hasn’t slowed since.
What exactly is a torpedo bat? How does it help hitters? And how is it legal? Let’s dig in.
Read: An MIT-educated professor, the Yankees and the bat that could be changing baseball
What is a torpedo bat and why is it different from a traditional MLB bat?
The idea of the torpedo bat is to take a size format — say, 34 inches and 32 ounces — and distribute the wood in a different geometric shape than the traditional form to ensure the fattest part of the bat is located where the player makes the most contact. Standard bats taper toward an end cap that is as thick diametrically as the sweet spot of the barrel. The torpedo bat moves some of the mass on the end of the bat about 6 to 7 inches lower, giving it a bowling-pin shape, with a much thinner end.
How does it help hitters?
The benefits for those who like swinging with it — and not everyone who has swung it likes it — are two-fold. Both are rooted in logic and physics. The first is that distributing more mass to the area of most frequent contact aligns with players’ swing patterns and provides greater impact when bat strikes ball. Players are perpetually seeking ways to barrel more balls, and while swings that connect on the end of the bat and toward the handle probably will have worse performance than with a traditional bat, that’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make for the additional slug. And as hitters know, slug is what pays.
The second benefit, in theory, is increased bat speed. Imagine a sledgehammer and a broomstick that both weigh 32 ounces. The sledgehammer’s weight is almost all at the end, whereas the broomstick’s is distributed evenly. Which is easier to swing fast? The broomstick, of course, because shape of the sledgehammer takes more strength and effort to move. By shedding some of the weight off the end of the torpedo bat and moving it toward the middle, hitters have found it swings very similarly to a traditional model but with slightly faster bat velocity.
Why did it become such a big story so early in the 2025 MLB season?
Because the New York Yankees hit nine home runs in a game Saturday and Michael Kay, their play-by-play announcer, pointed out that some of them came from hitters using a new bat shape. The fascination was immediate. While baseball, as an industry, has implemented forward-thinking rules in recent seasons, the modification to something so fundamental and known as the shape of a bat registered as bizarre. The initial response from many who saw it: How is this legal?
OK. How is this legal?
Major League Baseball’s bat regulations are relatively permissive. Currently, the rules allow for a maximum barrel diameter of 2.61 inches, a maximum length of 42 inches and a smooth and round shape. The lack of restrictions allows MLB’s authorized bat manufacturers to toy with bat geometry and for the results to still fall within the regulations.
Who came up with the idea of using them?
The notion of a bowling-pin-style bat has kicked around baseball for years. Some bat manufacturers made smaller versions as training tools. But the version that’s now infiltrating baseball goes back two years when a then-Yankees coach named Aaron Leanhardt started asking hitters how they should counteract the giant leaps in recent years made by pitchers.
When Yankees players responded that bigger barrels would help, Leanhardt — an MIT-educated former Michigan physics professor who left academia to work in the sports industry — recognized that as long as bats stayed within MLB parameters, he could change their geometry to make them a reality. Leanhardt, who left the Yankees to serve as major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins over the winter, worked with bat manufacturers throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons to make that a reality.
When did it first appear in MLB games?
It’s unclear specifically when. But Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat last year and went on a home run-hitting rampage in October that helped send the Yankees to the World Series. New York Mets star Francisco Lindor also used a torpedo-style bat last year and went on to finish second in National League MVP voting.
Who are some of the other notable early users of torpedo bats?
In addition to Stanton and Lindor, Yankees hitters Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt have used torpedoes to great success. Others who have used them in games include Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero, Minnesota’s Ryan Jeffers and Toronto’s Davis Schneider. And that’s just the beginning. Hundreds more players are expected to test out torpedoes — and perhaps use them in games — in the coming weeks.
How is this different from a corked bat?
Corking bats involves drilling a hole at the end of the bat, filling it in and capping it. The use of altered bats allows players to swing faster because the material with which they replace the wood — whether it’s cork, superballs or another material — is lighter. Any sort of bat adulteration is illegal and, if found, results in suspension.
Could a rule be changed to ban them?
Could it happen? Sure. Leagues and governing bodies have put restrictions on equipment they believe fundamentally altered fairness. Stick curvature is limited in hockey. Full-body swimsuits made of polyurethane and neoprene are banned by World Aquatics. But officials at MLB have acknowledged that the game’s pendulum has swung significantly toward pitching in recent years, and if an offensive revolution comes about because of torpedo bats — and that is far from a guarantee — it could bring about more balance to the game. If that pendulum swings too far, MLB could alter its bat regulations, something it has done multiple times already this century.
So the torpedo bat is here to stay?
Absolutely. Bat manufacturers are cranking them out and shipping them to interested players with great urgency. Just how widely the torpedo bat is adopted is the question that will play out over the rest of the season. But it has piqued the curiosity of nearly every hitter in the big leagues, and just as pitchers toy with new pitches to see if they can marginally improve themselves, hitters will do the same with bats.
Comfort is paramount with a bat, so hitters will test them during batting practice and in cage sessions before unleashing them during the game. As time goes on, players will find specific shapes that are most comfortable to them and best suit their swing during bat-fitting sessions — similar to how golfers seek custom clubs. But make no mistake: This is an almost-overnight alteration of the game, and “traditional or torpedo” is a question every big leaguer going forward will ask himself.
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