ATLANTA -- Alabama's defense leads the FBS in points and yards allowed per game. It even has scored the most defensive touchdowns. But is it the best defense ever?
According to Crimson Tide defensive end Jonathan Allen, it has the potential to be.
"I feel like this group can be as good as they want to be," the senior told reporters in Atlanta on Tuesday. "When we're focused doing our job, executing, communicating, running to the ball, having fun, we feel like we can be the best ever."
And Allen ought to know, considering he won the Chuck Bednarik Award for the nation's best defensive player this season. The potential top-five NFL draft pick led the team in sacks, blocked a kick and scored two touchdowns off fumble recoveries.
Allen said he's "excited" for the opportunity to face No. 4-ranked Washington's prolific offense in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl on Saturday.
That said, Allen doesn't think his defense is unbeatable.
"If we're not doing our job, guys aren't communicating ... I mean, anybody can win the ballgame," he said. "So I feel like it's in our hands."
Middle linebacker Reuben Foster, who won the Butkus Award for the nation's top linebacker, said that if you take the current defense out of the equation, he'd rank the 2009 defense as the best ever. That unit, which helped Nick Saban win his first national championship at Alabama, gave up just 11.7 points per game.
Alabama defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt, who was part of the team's support staff back in 2009, didn't get into the "best defense ever" debate, but he did shed light on what he thinks makes this year's defense so special.
"I think this day and time, it's hard to get one guy to do his job, much less 11 guys to do their job," he said. "I think this group has been unique in the fact that not only they know what to do, they know how to do it and they know why it's important to do it that way.
"And you can find guys that can do that some of the time, but it's hard to find guys that can do that all the time. And I think that's unique about this bunch is they can sustain. They can do it. It don't matter, you know, what's going on in the game, what the atmosphere is. I think the bigger the challenge, the more they kind of rise to the top."