To me, if sounds like you're obsessing over "recency bias" and not understanding what FPI does. FPI, like a lot of quant ranking systems, looks at results on a play-by-play basis over the season and factors in things like home field advantage, SoS, etc.
Over the course of this season, Alabama has played better than us IMO.
Yesterday, Tennessee played better.
It makes sense that Bama is ranked ahead of us in FPI, Sagarin, and other quant ranking systems IMO. But if we play like we did in the 2nd half yesterday for the rest of the season (rather than like we did in the 1st half the past 3 weeks or at the end of the Arky game), we'll be a legit contender. That's what matters.
If we continue to play like we did yesterday, we'll improve in FPI, but FPI still has to factor in the stinker of a game we had in Arky, a dismal Florida game that we were lucky to escape with a "W", and the 1st half of the Bama game where we couldn't score to save our lives. Also, I think Bama's near-loss against South Carolina doesn't look so bad right now, as SC has been looking pretty good. Whereas, the Arkansas team we stunk it up against, got blown out by LSU.