Tire Store Report -- Peach Bowl/National Semifinal

Boy, that was a weird game.  

You go to a neutral site, you beat a conference champion by more than two touchdowns, they cross the 50-yard line exactly twice, including once when the game was decided, they never run a play from inside your 15-yard line, you get a pick six, hold the #4 offense in the country to 7 points, keep the nation’s best undefeated streak intact, your defense scores as many as their offense, you have a running back go for 180 yards including a run that should be on next year's pregame highlight reel, and you punch your ticket for the National Championship game and you feel, well, kind of underwhelmed.

Maybe that is because last year’s semifinal game was even more dominating.  Maybe it’s because we didn’t score 30.  Maybe it’s because the offense looked like it was the first game of the season, not the fourteenth -- bad enough to get the offensive coordinator run out of the complex to his new job.  Whatever.  We didn’t have to be the best team in football, just the best team in the stadium.  And we were.

We were lucky enough to get to go to the game.  Not surprisingly, there was a lot more crimson and white than gold and grape Koolaid color in the Georgia Dome for its last college game ever.  Aside from the one touchdown drive, we just never got the impression that Washington was going to score many points.  I don’t know how it looked on TV but Washington’s offensive players seemed frustrated and a little confused.  Unfortunately, so did ours.  The difference being is that what frustrated Washington was the Alabama defense.  What frustrated Alabama was somewhat attributable to Washington’s defense, but also attributable to Alabama itself.  The offense took some extraordinarily stupid and untimely penalties.  I lost count of how many times flags flew and we ended up with third and 20-something.  Early in the game we were snapping the ball with 20 seconds or more on the play clock.  Later in the game, we were taking delay penalties (one of which was completely bogus) because we weren’t getting the play in from the sidelines soon enough.  The offense just looked out of sorts.

For really the first time this year, Hurts looked confused and a bit indecisive.  We don’t know if it was something Washington was doing on defense or what.  On the zone read plays he had several downs where something in the formation told him to keep the ball, when from the stands you could tell that getting the ball to someone else would go for a good gain (once, we think Jacobs was in the game and Hurts kept it for no gain when Jacobs looked like he was standing in the middle of Old Man Kelsey’s empty pasture).   Also, we can think of a number of times where Hurts was just plain trying to do too much.  He would shake and bake and lose yardage instead of just plowing ahead for the two or three yards that were there.  He chose not to throw to safety valve/check down receivers on several occasions.  Neither our offensive line nor wide receivers did a lot to help him out, to be honest.  Most guilty, though, we think was the play calling.  Washington’s defense was constantly having either a LB or a DE crash down from the backside.  It seemed perfectly set up for a screen pass or some misdirection all evening -- plays we have run frequently and successfully this year.  We don’t remember many at all.

In person, it sort of looked like Alabama was playing an old-timey game from the 1940s.  Get a lead, don’t do anything stupid on offense to jeopardize it, punt them deep, and let the defense shut them down.  And it was certainly a winning, and therefore effective, strategy.  I don’t think Washington would have driven the length of the field for a touchdown if that game had lasted three more quarters. Having Hurts throw a pick six against one of the statistically most productive defensive backfields in football would have been pretty stupid in those circumstances.

So the question becomes, are we just spoiled?  Having had Saban as head coach for 10 years now, are we at the point where if we don’t dominate even a very high-caliber opponent in every phase of the game, a 17-point victory is just not enough?  I don’t think so.  Alabama fans tend to measure Alabama against itself -- a standard of excellence.  Saturday was not our most excellent outing and The Grades very much reflect that fact.  I think the apprehension is caused by that failure to meet our own standards combined with an impression (perhaps accurate) that if we play that way on Monday night, especially on offense, we won’t continue our winning streak which is now within two games of the best Alabama has ever done.  There are some other goals besides, of course.

The good news is that the old saying is true: offense wins games; defense wins championships.  Here’s hoping that by late Monday night we have trouble figuring out whether it was the offense or the defense that carried us to victory.

Roll Tide, everyone.  Beat Clemson.

TO COMMENT ON THIS POST, PLEASE CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK.