Yet again the Crimson Tide took on an opponent, seemed to
very quickly figure out that they were not a serious threat, and then sort of
seemed to lose interest in the contest.
This time, it almost cost them, but not really. It seemed like it might cost Alabama because of
Oklahoma’s deserved reputation as a team that can put up a lot of points and do
it in a hurry; and not really because of
Oklahoma’s deserved reputation as a defense that couldn’t stop a runaway
tricycle.
We were certainly nervous when Oklahoma clawed back, sort of
literally, to within 11. The Comptroller
kept saying, “I can’t believe y’all are nervous.” She works with numbers a lot and I guess that
gave her more confidence than it gave those of us who bust down tires and do
rotations instead.
This game did renew our faith in how football is supposed to
be played -- a team that is only good on offense is going to be in trouble when
it runs into an opponent that bothers to play well on both sides of the line of
scrimmage. The Big 12ish seems to have
agreed, as a conference, that defense is optional -- most all the best athletes
should be put on the offensive side of the ball, and any team that can luck
into a couple of turnovers or other mistakes by the other team’s offense will
win on the last possession or two.
If they like that style, then fine. We just don’t think that is the way football
is meant to be played. We hope this fad
won’t have long-term success against teams from other conferences that are
willing to play defense and it will go the way of the leisure suits and those
creepy little troll dolls with green hair.
In fact, if anything, we’d prefer to start with defense. Coach Bryant said something to the effect of:
If we don’t score, they might win; if they
don’t score, we’ll never lose. Maybe we
are just getting old-fashioned. But we’d
rather be out-of-style, undefeated and heading to the national championship game
than fashionable and currently preparing for the Spring scrimmage.
Tagovailoa got a little redemption. By the end of this game, his season-long
quarterback rating had climbed to 205.2.
Kyler Murray’s is 199.2. Murray
is a good athlete and deserving of a lot of respect for his leadership and
ability. However, if he’d had to play
defenses week in and week out like Mississippi State, Georgia, LSU, etc. we are
not sure his success level would be quite so gaudy. And Tagovailoa’s stats from Saturday’s game
were impressive (24/27 for 318 yards, 4 touchdowns and 0 interceptions) but
seem to be totally lost in all the discussion about how wonderful Murray
is. We have always wondered what Josh Jacobs
could do if he stayed healthy for an entire season. We are now seeing that. His touchdown run with defenders bouncing off
him like so many ninepins was the sort of thing that they play in the background
during the first round of the NFL draft.
The defense was a little inconsistent. However, some of the Oklahoma statistics were
inflated by the fact that Alabama went into anaconda mode a couple of times and
traded yardage for time, like at the end of the first half. Patrick Surtain II, who has had an
outstanding freshman year at defensive back, was pushed like a shopping cart by
Oklahoma’s receivers -- maybe that is how they rack up the passing statistics
they did. We expect him to play better
in the championship, when we hope the rules will be a little better enforced
and, frankly, he’ll be a little more aggressive if they aren’t. However, any effort that held this Oklahoma team
to 34 points, given the Oklahoma defense, was a fine and almost certainly
winning effort.
We have said enough about officiating this year. You covered many of the deficiencies quite
well, Commissioner. A friend of ours who
was at the game said there was a lot more pushing, shoving, and even punches
thrown than were shown on TV. Apparently when Oklahoma’s coaching staff
exhorted the team to “fight” during the second quarter, they took him pretty
literally. How the fellow who jumped on
Williams after his sack and started trying to punch him in the head didn’t rate
an ejection, or even a flag, is beyond us.
Maybe they just aren’t used to that sort of thing over in the ACC. Good riddance to that crew.
We do hope that the offseason sees some revisions to the
rule about what is a pass reception.
This whole thing of re-running the “catch” from 50 different cameras,
enlarged, in super slow motion, just to see if the point of the ball moves an
inch or two between the time a player possess it and is called down is not only
delaying the games it is, well, stupid.
The problem here is not, in our opinion, the officials who are being
asked to see things in real time that are not able to be seen by anyone who
doesn’t have Superman’s vision, but the rule itself. The calls in the Clemson / Notre Dame game
were worse than ours, though we fear what this is turning into. If you have to watch it a dozen times,
frame-by-frame, enlarged till it fills up a 55-inch screen, then that process
itself ought to be enough to indicate that the call on the field was good
enough.
Coach Saban is famous for comparing a college football
season to a mountain climb. Once again,
the Crimson Tide are at the last step of gaining the summit of the mountain. The higher you are, though, the further you
fall if you make a misstep. It is time
for Alabama to finish off the climb it started back in the heat and humidity of
Labor Day weekend against Louisville.
On to the National Championship game on the west coast. Rumors are that the field was in terrible
shape for last weekend’s NFL season finale. Pete Carroll made a point of complaining about
it after the game and flat out said the terrible turf cost his team at least a
field goal. There was talk of resodding the
whole field before Monday night, if they could get it done in between predicted
rain storms, which apparently didn’t happen.
I expect the team would happily take the predicted mid-50s and rain
showers over the drenching humidity of south Florida -- a sloppy muddy field is
a different matter. Either way, it
should be an exciting evening.
Roll Tide. Beat
Clemson.
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