Sunday Hangover: San Jose State

It's been a few years since the Crimson Tide has had a season opener where they were heavily favored. Last year they played Virginia Tech, and the year before it was another ACC foe, Clemson, with both games in the Georgia Dome. But yesterday the Spartans of San Jose went into the newly expanded Bryant-Denny Stadium (now seating over 100K) and got trounced.

Here are my so-called thoughts on last night's game.

Both QBs had very good days, and McCarron saw significant time manning the offense. For whatever reason, the coaching staff pulled McElroy in the second quarter and then he got reinserted early in the third for a couple of series.

The big question mark on offense to me is who is going to take over as the third running back role on the team. Eddie Lacy, the leading rusher on Saturday, seems to the guy for Roy Upchurch's role the last couple of seasons, but after a Robert Lester interception in the second quarter, the offense quickly marched toward the goal line only to have Lacy fumble the ball after a defender's helmet jarred the ball loose.

I suspect he'll hear about from Coach Saban for a while. And during the halftime before-going-to-the-locker room interview, Saban was quite grouchy about that mistake and big plays given up on defense.

So Demetrius Goode got some good playing time in the game, but eventually Lacy got released from the dog house and put in a stellar rushing performance. And from these amateur's eyes, he did very well in pass protection.

It's hard to say how good the defense is at this point in the season. They didn't play against a powerhouse offense by any means. Hightower doesn't seem as lively in the play-calling role like McClain was, but then again Hightower didn't play a ton. After a while, they rotated in other linebackers to build depth, namely Nico Johnson (starter from last year) and true freshman C. J. Mosely, who really impressed with his instincts of dropping back into coverage but disappointed because of his stone hands. He had three passes broken up from the linebacker position.

Then again, the defense was playing pretty vanilla in the game. I recall maybe two or three blitzes, but the front four didn't seem to get a ton of pressure on the QB, which is not a good sign.

So I see three important questions marks for the upcoming Penn State game. Will Ingram be healthy enough to play? Will the NCAA reduce the suspension of Dareus to only one game, so he can play? But most importantly, how good is this defense?