As I've been saying all off-season, I expect Bama's offense to take a pretty sizeable step back and their defense to be better. So you might be right, and it's not like we've proven we can run the ball against any elite teams lately. BUT, the Bama defense was not great last year and while they ranked pretty well overall against the run, there were some teams who had success.
A&M got 115 on them
Ole Miss got 268 on them (at 4.7 a clip)
UGA got 145 on them (4.83 a carry)
Tennessee, Auburn, ND and OSU all had over 100 yards rushing as well.
I don't think 100 is anything great, so I don't want to set the bar there, but we only had 89 against Clemson. 87 in the opener against the gator 2 years ago (the 12 thousand sacks had a lot to do with that). We really haven't even been able to run it against FSU except for last year. So prior history says, when we play teams with good talent in the front 7, we run into a brick wall. But Bama, again, wasn't elite in that department last season. I think if we can get to 150 on the ground, we can be in the game well into the 2nd half. If we go out in the first half and run it 17 times for 38 yards, just forget it.