In case there were any questions about who should be ranked No. 1 in college football, Alabama went into Knoxville, Tennessee, and dominated the Volunteers in a 49-10 victory last Saturday. The 39-point victory is tied for the second largest in a top-10 SEC matchup in The Associated Press poll era. Heading into Alabama's meeting Saturday with No. 6 Texas A&M, here's what the numbers say about the Tide's performance this season.

With the win, Alabama moved up to No. 1 in ESPN’s three metrics: FPI, strength of record and game control. That means that at this point in the season, Alabama not only has the most impressive résumé (SOR and GC) but is also predicted to be the strongest team going forward (FPI).

Let’s begin by examining the Tide's résumé. Alabama has road wins against Ole Miss, Arkansas and Tennessee. All three of those teams are currently in the AP Top 25 and in the top 35 in FPI. The Crimson Tide also have a neutral-site victory over USC, which is looking more impressive with each Trojans win.

An average Top 25 team (about the 12th-best team in the country) would have a 4 percent chance of starting 7-0 against Alabama’s schedule and would be expected to have lost two or three of Alabama’s first seven games.

Tide's wins aren't nail-biters

Some teams have a way of squeaking out close wins and boosting their résumé without looking overly impressive. That has not been the case for Alabama, which leads the country in game control and has the fourth-best scoring margin in the country. (Game control reflects the chance that an average Top 25 team would control games from start to end the way this team did, given the schedule.)

Alabama’s defense has been a major component of the team's success. The Crimson Tide have posted a defensive efficiency rating of 90 or higher (out of 100) in every game, and the case can be made that this is the best defense that 10th-year coach Nick Saban has ever had. No team in the last decade has had a defensive efficiency rating as high as Alabama’s (98.5) through seven games.

Looking ahead, the Crimson Tide are now nearly four times as likely to win the SEC as any other team, according to FPI. The Tide have a 59 percent chance to win the conference, and if they beat Texas A&M on Saturday, that percentage will likely approach 80 percent.

FPI gives the Tide a 77 percent chance to beat visiting Texas A&M and a 34 percent chance to enter bowls undefeated. The Aggies are seventh in FPI and are even closer to Alabama in strength of record at third, behind Clemson.

Texas A&M has two wins over teams in the top 15 of FPI (at Auburn and against Tennessee). The Aggies' win over Auburn had a game score of 98, which through Week 7 was the second-highest game score of the season (behind Ohio State's win at Oklahoma). Game score measures (on a 0-to-100 scale) the impressiveness of a team's win given whom it played, the game site and how well the team controlled the game.

The Aggies have a 14 percent chance to win the SEC, second in the SEC West to Alabama.

National championship repeat not a sure thing for Alabama

Despite all of the numbers above, the Tide are not a sure thing to win their second consecutive national championship and fifth title in the past eight seasons. The last two times that Alabama led the country in each of ESPN’s trio of metrics (2013 and 2014) it did not win the title.

Strength of record is a backward-looking résumé rating that measures how difficult it is to achieve a team’s record, given its schedule. FPI is a forward-looking power rating that accounts for how a team won or lost its games. In other words, SOR measures “most deserving” and FPI is more of a measure of the “best” or “strongest” teams.