Good job, Commissioner. That was a tough game to grade. We happened to hear the Coach’s interview on the Alabama Radio Network
at halftime. He made an interesting
comment, focused on the defense. He
said, “we aren’t doing the things we practiced.” Given that this was the first game after
nothing but months and months of practice, that seemed sort of odd.
For whatever reason, and I expect some of it had to do with
less than gentle reminders in the halftime locker room, the team as a whole and
the defense in particular, seemed to have returned to some of the lessons
taught in last two quarters.
Down here at the Tire Store we had an odd sensation of
things being upside down. Some things we
expected to be strengths turned out to be not quite so strong; some things that
had been keeping us up at night turned out to be solid as a tire iron.
Let’s start with the pleasant surprises. We admit that when time finally came for
Alabama’s first punt, we held our breath just a little bit. Therefore, we didn’t have quite enough air to
cheer as loudly as we should have for the absolute howitzer of a punt that
brought a collective “oooohhhh” from the crowd in the Dome. Ditto with field goal attempts. We didn’t hold our breath on covering kickoff
returns, a mistake we promise to remedy on Saturday. But the point is that the time we spent
worrying about kicking was wasted.
The same is generally true of the offensive line. This was a new group that had been playing
together only through Fall Camp. Due to
an odd combination of injuries, suspensions, incoming talent, etc. this was a
starting line you would have been hard pressed to predict back in January. Starting a true freshman on the left side
should have caused more breath-holding, but we didn’t really notice him at all,
except on those occasions where he was throwing road grader blocks at the
second level. Hurray. The o-line issues were caused by three
penalties on the same upper classman… See what we mean? Upside down.
Unfortunately, some of the things that we sort of counted on
to come through left, um, some work to do in practice this week (and the
next). With the talent we have on
defensive line and at linebacker, we expected stopping runs between the tackles
to be as easy as fixing a flat, but WVU had surprisingly good success doing
just that for the whole first half. Things clamped down, and thanks to some second half improvement at the
point of attack, a shotgun snap over the qb’s head, and sacks, WVU managed to
average rushing for only 1.5 yards per attempt. To be fair, even if you take out the bad snap, the rush per attempt was
still under 2 yards). That’s a stat we’d
find reassuring, if we hadn’t seen the game.
Alabama has two very talented freshman defensive backs. One was rated by recruiting services as one
of the best players in the whole senior class -- not the best defensive back,
one of the best players available. The
other is a world-class track athlete with an impeccable pedigree. We were confident that because the
upperclassmen had managed to keep these two prodigies off the field for the
first game, DB play would be solid, maybe even outstanding. Well, not so much. We need to show some serious improvement at
the boundary DB position, in particular.
Way too much ink (and whatever the online equivalent is) was
spent on who would quarterback the Crimson Tide. Blake Sims got the nod. We won the game. His stat line was more than respectable. In fact, it exceeded debut stats put up by
players named A.J., John Parker, Brodie, and Greg. There were some clear misreads in the first
half, a couple of off-target throws, and an interception probably attributable
to staring down his receiver. For us,
the key was that in the first half there was a little bit of a crisis, Coach
told the back up to get loose -- the game was far from secure. To Blake Sims’ credit, he got things under
control, remained in the game, and led the team to a victory.
Generally, the defense is likely to improve when we get back
an experienced db from his post-surgical rehab and our defensive signal caller
back from ncaa suspension. Holding any
of the various arena football offenses that fly under the HUNH banner to just
16 points is an achievement. That said,
we have little confidence a performance like that one will hold some of the
conference HUNH teams on the schedule to just 16 points.
The old saying is that the team will see its most
improvement from the first game to the second. That’s hopeful, but like the first game itself, just a bit disappointing
that we have a number of areas that could improve so very much.
So we are now off to a more traditional pre-conference
schedule. Saturday’s game will begin at
11:00 a.m. on the brand spanking new SEC Network. Tailgating may lend itself more to bagels and
bacon than burgers and barbecue. Enjoy
the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment