As was expected, Coach Saban was pissed at halftime.
The sideline reporter for ESPNU questioned an angry man on Saturday. Mental errors, lack of intensity, limited success running the ball, many third and longs, these all contributed to the Saban's nasty attitude even though the Tide was up 14 to 0 at half.
Realistically, the Tide didn't look that great in the first half. The Commodores ventured into Alabama territory many times and had some explosive plays. Vanderbilt would have scored two field goals if the kicker would have done his job. However, both were long field goal tries, but Vandy did move the ball on the vaunted Alabama defense that a journalist from SI compared to some of the best historically. We'll see about that since the defenses of '66, '79, '92, and '09 were remarkably salty. Tough as hell.
Alabama got it together in the second half. Richardson had 111 yards of rushing by the end of the game, and Jalston Fowler, the Tide's third string running back, also brought the pain to the Commodores since Lacy sat out with turf toe. Fowler has to weigh somewhere around 250 lbs., and he's comparable to a middle linebacker with speed and moves.
The promising aspect of the offense is that McCarron had a good game with four touchdowns thrown to DeAndrew White (two), Smelley, and Hanks. White made two really nice grabs. The touchdown right at the close of the first half had White jumping high above defenders in the back of the end zone even though McCarron could have probably run in the ball for a touchdown, which was evident from reading Coach Saban's lips on the sidelines, "A.J.! Run the ball!" I think there were also curse words used. The second touchdown to White was a long touchdown pass, which makes me hopeful for more a vertical passing game.
Regardless, even though the win was a shutout (34-0), there is a lot the coaching staff can take away from the game for future contests--both good and bad.
That idea was clear in Saban's opening comments after the game: "It’s always good to win in the league. We obviously didn’t play our best football game, especially in the first half. We didn’t have the mental energy and intensity that we like to have, to play with the kind of consistency that we need to in order to improve as a team. I think it’s a challenge for everyone to say what do I want to accomplish, what is important to me, what kind of ownership am I willing to take for that, and am I going to be individually responsible to make sure I do my job well all the time. It doesn’t have anything to do with who you are playing. Vanderbilt has a great team. They are doing a good job with their team. They play hard and create a lot of problems for you on offense and do a lot of things to take advantage and play well with the guys they have. We played a lot better in the second half. AJ (McCarron) played pretty well, he didn’t turn the ball over which was really important. We made some adjustments and played a lot better in the second half. We certainly have a lot of things we need to improve on and we will continue to work on that. Everybody’s got to take the same ownership and responsibility to do that so we can get better as a team.”
Next Saturday the Crimson Tide travels to Oxford to battle the Rebels of Ole Miss in Vaught-Hemingway.
No comments:
Post a Comment