Thanks for this edition of the Grades, Commissioner. An excellent job of summarizing. As the great Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips once said
after a particularly nasty defeat -- “The film looked suspiciously like the game
itself.”
Offense: Clemson had
an outstanding game plan and executed it very well. Alabama helped by not
calling or executing very well on offense.
It seemed to us, frankly, that Alabama tended to go away from plays that
were working pretty well to try to succeed at plays that didn’t go so well. One critical factor that we noticed was that
Clemson had the football IQ and the players to change their defensive
formations at or just before the snap.
Tua has done a really, really outstanding job this season of knowing
where to go with the football. On passing
downs, at least, he is an excellent reader of the opposing defense. This dictates where the pass should be
thrown. Simplistically, if the defense
lines up in their “Apple” formation, he knows that means his receiver on the
far right should have the best match up.
Wherever he looks first, that is where he is going. If the defense is in “Banana” he is throwing
it to the left. If they are in “Cherries”
then he throws to the tight end or the running back.
Clemson was changing from Apple to Cherries right at the snap
(or perhaps actually being in the Cherries defense but making it look like
Apple). It sounds simple, but is very
difficult for a defense to do. The
players have to all know their assignments, not run into each other, get to where
they are going, all in a split second.
Furthermore, while this will work for a little bit, a good quarterback
will figure this out and pretty soon wait for his patterns to develop and pick
on the guy who has not adjusted quickly enough.
Clemson was able to counter this by getting a solid pass rush from their
defensive line of future NFL players.
Alabama was not able to adjust, most especially near the goal line.
The good news is that there are very very few defenses in
college football that can successfully emulate what Clemson was able to
do. Even next year’s edition of Clemson
might not be able to. The bad news is
that the defenses we think can manage it, at least sometimes, (Clemson,
Georgia, probably LSU, maybe Texas A&M or Ohio State), are all teams
Alabama may see this year. Can our
coaching staff and quarterback adjust?
We expect they will.
Defense: Alabama’s
offense did not help its defense very much, but there were long stretches of the
game where the defense looked undermanned.
It’s sort of like when we are trying to bust loose a rusty or
cross-threaded lug nut. Sometimes the
air gun won’t do it and we end up the old-fashioned way -- a 4-way with a
cheater bar and a series of steady pulls.
This works mostly (though one time we saw Big Willie twist a perfectly
good steel 4-way lug wrench around as pretty as you please -- looked like some
weird little piece of wrought iron fence).
Anyway, the point is that it is not that last push that really broke things loose and got the
lug nut off -- it was the cumulative effect of all those efforts. We think that is sort of what happened to
Alabama’s defense -- the accumulation of very good athletes hobbled by injury
eventually became too much to overcome against a great opponent with great
athletes and things broke loose. Christian Miller having a
hamstring injury was just sort of the last pull on the lug wrench. Buggs, Diggs, Lewis, Miller, Smith -- eventually
it is not just “next man up” no matter how hard they try. Alabama struggled to get any pressure on the
quarterback at any time in the game.
Their receivers made some outstanding catches. Does a completely healthy defense change the
outcome? We honestly don’t know, but it couldn’t
have hurt.
Special Teams: Well,
mostly they weren’t so special, with a poorly designed and more poorly executed
fake field goal and a kick off out of bounds when momentum seemed to be
changing for the good guys. We’d be
remiss, however, not to tip our cap to gallant walk-on Mike Bernier, who came
in to have steadying (if not exactly record-setting) influence on a punting
game that had begun to exhibit junior high level inconsistency. He had his best performance on the biggest
stage. We are glad he chose to wear Crimson. Good luck to him in the future.
Coaching: The team
did not seem to be well-prepared for this game.
Certainly, the in-game adjustments did not seem that good. To be honest, things had seemed a little out
of synch ever since the Mississippi State game.
We are not sure just what to do about all the coaches moving in and out
of the program. Sometimes coordinators
taking a new job before the season end seemed to work out just fine -- e.g. Pruitt
and McElwain; sometimes not so much -- e.g. Kiffin.
We get that the whole idea of being an assistant college coach is to
someday run your own show. But we are
going to trust Coach Saban to come up with a solution here. We just don’t think that having our coaches interviewing for and
transitioning to new jobs at the same time we are in the heart of the new recruiting signing period and preparing for our hardest
games of the year is fair to them or their players.
Alabama lost at the end of a magical season. The world didn’t end. The sun came up and everything, though we
admit to peeking out the blinds a little early on Tuesday morning just to make
sure.
The Commissioner’s chronicle of the game being so complete
and so compelling, and the fact that continuing to dwell on the game might upset
our dinner plans, we hope you will indulge us in a personal note.
The original owner of the Tire Store was Glenn Williams,
referred to as Pop. He was a two-way
player at Sidney Lanier back in the day, as he liked to tell it, when the
coaches said that weight lifting made you muscle bound, drinking water in
practice caused cramps, and facemasks had taken all the fear out of the
game. He had a scholarship offer to play
football at Maryland, but instead he married his high school sweetheart, settled
down, and pretty soon bought the Tire Store franchise. Pop was as old school as things got. He carried customers on the books for months
and never charged a dime of interest.
From time to time customers paid him in tomatoes, cucumbers, and
zucchini they grew in their own gardens.
He retired a few years ago, and the Tire Store was never really the
same.
He raised his kids right.
In particular, he taught his daughter the finer points of football. You know you are on the right track when you
are watching the game with your girlfriend and she says something like, “If the
ball wasn’t in the air that’s just holding, not pass interference, you bonehead
referee”. It’s the kind of thing that
makes you want to marry her. And I
talked her into it.
Pop passed away last week from complications related to
COPD. He was a devoted father, husband,
and grandfather. More than that, he was
a Christian, a gentleman, and a lifelong Alabama fan.
We don’t have any higher compliments that we can give. Like the Tire Store itself, for us things
will never really be the same.
Rest in Peace, Pop.
A failure should never be wasted, according to the Head
Coach, and we doubt this one will. There
are various coaching staff vacancies to fill and reassignments to be made. National signing day is next month and
recruiting for the last few spots is in full swing. Spring practice will start in March and the A-Day
game will be held in April. On
August 31, the reigning SEC Champions will kick the football off again in
Bryant Denny Stadium. We hope to see you
there.
Roll Tide. Beat Duke.
TO COMMENT ON THIS POST, PLEASE CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK.
No comments:
Post a Comment