It was exactly what I feared. 
The past two weeks I've said repeatedly that we were going to miss Dillon Gordon and John David Moore in this game, that without them it would be tough sledding trying to run the ball against that front seven and that was pretty much exactly what happened. Still, I put this loss squarely on the shoulders of the OL. All five of these starters will likely get drafted and there was no reason for Harris to constantly be under pressure and for Fournette to be getting hit in the backfield on pretty much every play. It really doesn't matter what play gets called, if we can't block for it, it won't work, plain and simple.
I felt like every other position on the field played well enough to win, QB, WR, LB, DL, Secondary... its just that without offensive drives to hold onto the ball, Bama was able to do to us what we try to do to others, namely wear down the opposing defense so that the running game pays big dividends in the second half and the game snowballs to a greater margin than it should have been. They dominated the crucial TOP 2:1 and we only ran 45 plays as a result. This game played out exactly as I most feared it might, but I never imagined the OL would underperform so badly.
It was kind of funny - I was watching the game with a group of people and all half-time there was this guy railing on Miles taking about how we needed to throw it more on 1st down, how Miles was just too stubborn to ever do that (all evidence to the contrary) - and when we opened up the second half he actually yelled 'there we go' when Harris ran play-action... only to watch him throw his first INT of the season on the play that truly swung the game's momentum wholly in favor of Alabama. It was all downhill from there. Not saying that passing the ball was a bad idea by any means, just that its kinda funny when armchairs get exactly what they're screaming for and things don't magically get all better.
Gotta give Alabama credit though. They didn't turn the ball over (not until it didn't really matter any more), their crappy kicker went 3/3 including a 55 yarder, their kick coverage unit played better than it has all season and Coker made a couple of throws I haven't seen him make all year. Sometimes the other team just outplays you and that's what we saw last night. I hate it, hate it for the team, I'm sick for them... but no, the focus now turns to winning our remaining games. An 11-1, 12-1 season was an unimaginable possibility a few months ago and its still well within our grasp... just got to do some soul-searching, dig deep and come out the next few weeks without that malaise that so often seems to settle in after an Alabama loss.
The past two weeks I've said repeatedly that we were going to miss Dillon Gordon and John David Moore in this game, that without them it would be tough sledding trying to run the ball against that front seven and that was pretty much exactly what happened. Still, I put this loss squarely on the shoulders of the OL. All five of these starters will likely get drafted and there was no reason for Harris to constantly be under pressure and for Fournette to be getting hit in the backfield on pretty much every play. It really doesn't matter what play gets called, if we can't block for it, it won't work, plain and simple.
I felt like every other position on the field played well enough to win, QB, WR, LB, DL, Secondary... its just that without offensive drives to hold onto the ball, Bama was able to do to us what we try to do to others, namely wear down the opposing defense so that the running game pays big dividends in the second half and the game snowballs to a greater margin than it should have been. They dominated the crucial TOP 2:1 and we only ran 45 plays as a result. This game played out exactly as I most feared it might, but I never imagined the OL would underperform so badly.
It was kind of funny - I was watching the game with a group of people and all half-time there was this guy railing on Miles taking about how we needed to throw it more on 1st down, how Miles was just too stubborn to ever do that (all evidence to the contrary) - and when we opened up the second half he actually yelled 'there we go' when Harris ran play-action... only to watch him throw his first INT of the season on the play that truly swung the game's momentum wholly in favor of Alabama. It was all downhill from there. Not saying that passing the ball was a bad idea by any means, just that its kinda funny when armchairs get exactly what they're screaming for and things don't magically get all better.
Gotta give Alabama credit though. They didn't turn the ball over (not until it didn't really matter any more), their crappy kicker went 3/3 including a 55 yarder, their kick coverage unit played better than it has all season and Coker made a couple of throws I haven't seen him make all year. Sometimes the other team just outplays you and that's what we saw last night. I hate it, hate it for the team, I'm sick for them... but no, the focus now turns to winning our remaining games. An 11-1, 12-1 season was an unimaginable possibility a few months ago and its still well within our grasp... just got to do some soul-searching, dig deep and come out the next few weeks without that malaise that so often seems to settle in after an Alabama loss.
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