Tire Store Report Texas A&M

Thanks, Commissioner.  We might quibble on a couple of those grades as being a slight bit generous.  Not enough to matter on the overall GPA, though.  

We are concerned that every phase of the game, and some of the coaching as well, seemed not to be to a standard, especially at the point in the game where we felt like Alabama went from having a chance to make the Aggies quit, to letting them make it interesting.  You are have already ably chronicled the whole ugly sequence.  Bottom line, we catch a pass short of the first down and fumble, losing the ball, momentum, and the chance to flip the field all in one forgettable minute.  After that point, things didn’t really seem right until Alabama’s final offensive drive, though even there why we chose to run outside on third and two when Texas A&M’s defense had successfully sold out to stop edge rushes for the entire half is a head-scratcher – bad call, badly executed.  In any event, all of the things that served to make the last half of the game as frustrating as a rusted-on lug nut came together in a conglomeration of lack of concentration, ill-timed penalties, injuries, and plain old bad luck.  The good news is that despite all that, the team had the resilience, despite its relative youth, to win the game.

Officiating:  Here is a sad fact of life for you.  The SEC Office considers Matt Austin’s officiating crew one of its best and most experienced.  Now, admittedly, that is setting the bar low enough that it would take hydraulic equipment from John Deere to get it any lower.  “Congratulations, you have the lowest starting weight on this season’s “Biggest Loser”.  Seriously, have you seen the sequence in the Kentucky / Missouri game?  Or the SEC’s follow-up press release about how it was called wrong and handled badly?  What in the world?  Part of the officiating issue in the SEC is that the consequences of doing an inferior job as an officiating crew are that the League Office issues a press release saying you got it wrong.  Move on.  Nothing to see here.

If Alabama had an “off night” for this season on Saturday, then Austin’s crew had the off night of a decade.  The missed calls were numerous – poor Jalen nearly had his head pulled off on a facemask that wasn’t flagged, Levi Wallace got called for pass interference on a ball that Manute Bol couldn’t have reached in bounds with a step stool and stickum, Aggie defensive players found out that lining up at or over the line of scrimmage would not be penalized and therefore had a head start all night….  Feel free to look around the internet today at the various photos of Alabama’s defensive linemen being held, grabbed, tackled -- in one case our defensive lineman is running across the field with an Aggie on his back like he is getting a piggy back ride.  We're serious.  In fact, we don’t know who the Alabama player is because he you can’t even see his number.  The thing that really gets our goat is why Kirk’s fourth down/touchdown reception was not reviewed.  We'rem not sure it was a catch and we're not sure it wasn’t.  Likely whatever was called on the field would be allowed to stand.  But they didn’t even bother to check.  Thinking back over some of the plays that have been subjected to seemingly endless reviews by all sorts of officials in various cities, we’d really like an explanation of why a play that close didn’t merit at least a quick glance.

We can find out how, say, our individual offensive linemen graded out in every game.  Supposedly the SEC officials are graded on performance game to game.  We’d love to see that report card some time.  Regular readers can skip to the next paragraph, but the best teams, with the best coaches, and the best fans in all of college football deserve first-rate officiating at their games.  We do not have it.  And it is not even close.

Coaching:  Coach Saban has used a mountain-climbing analogy for a football season lots of time.  It’s less vivid than eating rat poison, but pretty effective.  Every game is a chance to stumble and slide back from your goal of reaching the summit.  Alabama had a real chance to slip up on Saturday, but they never trailed after early in the first quarter.  It was not Alabama’s finest hour.  However, we’d sure rather be an Alabama fans than, say, rooting for Michigan or Oklahoma today.  The coaches will have an interesting couple of weeks to get this team through to the bye week.  Coach Daboll, in particular, needs some tactical work on what to do when a team is able to load the defensive line and limit running up the middle and to the edges.  I'm not sure we see another defensive line with that kind of talent till at least the end of next month.  Even so, now would be the time to think about it.

Injuries:  Starting towards the last half of last season, the injury bug has infected the Crimson Tide locker room.  It is now at nearly epidemic proportions.  Unfortunately, it is hitting in a variety of key areas.  Josh Jacobs got hurt in Fall Camp and still hasn't worked his way back to many meaningful downs.  In the very first game of the season we had four different linebackers go down to injury including two of what were projected to be our best pass rushers -- apparently for the season.  Last week, our best defensive end and perhaps our best defensive lineman, Da’Shawn Hand, went down on a dirty, if not strictly illegal, block to the side of the knee.  Center Bradley Bozeman, the acknowledged leader of the offensive line, missed the first two days of practice this week with an undisclosed limitation, though it was rumored to be a hand injury.  Calvin Ridley (if you don’t know who this is, please hit the “back” button on your browser and return to the prior website you were reading “Termites and Their Fascinating Underground Life” or whatever) had to leave the game with a leg injury.  Tony Brown, a defensive back who brings fire and vicious hitting to the safety position, sat out with an injury in the second half….

This is not meant to be an indictment of back up players.  Isaiah Buggs performed admirably at defensive end.  Freshman defensive end LaBryan Ray, who at the beginning of the season was projected to redshirt, then two weeks into the season was given a look as the largest outside linebacker in the history of the program, ended up in the game last night at defensive end and recorded statistics.  Keith Holcombe has gone from special teams standout to stalwart at linebacker.  Shyheim Carter came in at defensive back in Brown’s absence….  At risk of stating the obvious, though, this cannot be sustained.  It is time to get some players back in action.

Personal Responsibility:  So, the Commissioner has already confessed to a small shortcoming on Saturday.  He should not stand at the altar alone.  We are definitely reminding Pee Wee before he leaves Saturday that the north hydraulic rack stays up and the south one stays down on game weekends.  Perhaps it was just a small butterfly effect in the college football cosmos, but we humbly request that everyone prepare to a standard next weekend – if you have not been wearing your lucky cap, or emailing your kids the traditional “Wake up Fool, it’s game day” message, or sitting in your lucky chair, or enjoying an icy cold Coca-Cola, or putting your portrait of Coach Bryant in sight of the television set, or sporting your lucky underwear, or . . . maybe we’d best stop before we “overshare”.    Anyway, we encourage you to make a special effort this Saturday.  Something is slightly out of whack – please do your part in realigning the planets.  We need to barbeque the Hogs and do so injury-free.  Remember, it’s bad luck not to be superstitious.

We continue to be of the opinion that the only team in the conference that can beat Alabama is Alabama.  Saturday night, with some help from Matt Austin and his jolly band of travelling near-sighted convicts, we took a run at slipping off the side of the mountain.  Today, however, Alabama is undefeated, a mark currently matched by only 12 other teams of the 130 in the FBS.  We'll take that.

We expect a better, four-quarter effort against the Razorbacks for homecoming on Saturday evening.  If you are going to the game, drive carefully, enjoy the parade, and cheer the team on to victory.  

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