JessN: Sugar Bowl wrap-up: What will this game mean for Alabama’s future?

KrAzY3 said:

Ok, how about this. From what I've read, Stanford returned 10 starters on defense.

So, no, I'm not hanging my argument on one position, I'm hanging it on the simple fact that Alabama was less experienced on defense.

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At year's start:

Ed Stinson - 3-year starter (1 at Jack, 2 on the line)
C.J. Mosley - no explanation needed.
Trey DePriest - returning starter, 1 year key backup
Deion Belue - 1-year starter at CB for Bama, and 2 years as starter in JUCO
Ha'Sean Clinton-Dix - First year as full-time starter but was the starting dime last year and played a good bit as a freshman. Projected to go in the first round of the NFL Draft so it's kind of moot anyway.
Vinnie Sunseri - prior to injury, had started for 1 year and was a heavy contributor at nickel/dime the year before that
Xzavier Dickson - returning starter, suspended for OU game but started A&M/Auburn
Adrian Hubbard - 1-year starter, key reserve his RS freshman year, 2013 was his fourth year in the program

That's 8 of the 11 guys. The other three included Brandon Ivory, who was in the A-group rotation as a sophomore, started a couple of games in his career when Jesse Williams was hurt and is a fourth-year player; Jeoffrey Pagan and the other CB. At this point, I forgot that senior John Fulton was actually the Week 1 starter, which means Alabama actually had more experience (by class) than Stanford at the start of the season. I actually consider Sylve to be current starter, who has been limited for six weeks now due to an ankle sprain, but the takeaway is that the off-corner position -- once Fulton was replaced -- was the only position on defense filled by a guy with no experience. Dickson's suspension cleared the deck for Denzel Devall, who was a key reserve in 2012, while Sunseri's injury elevated Landon Collins, who didn't have a lot of experience with the 1s prior to this year but at least was the starting dime while Sunseri was healthy. Pagan had similar experience as Collins, with one prior start.

If Stanford had more cumulative experience than that, it wasn't by enough to matter.

KrAzY3 said:

Alabama had one of the best defenses in the NCAA this year. I just can't accept the notion of something "having" to change, or that change would automatically be for the better. Losing happens sometimes. I think there were personnel issues in the secondary, but that's bound to happen eventually. Most teams would kill to have Alabama's defense, and I'm not sure we could pick any defense out there and definitively say it is better (even Stanford). Sure, may be we'd like to use it for a game or two, but that's not how it works. Your defense needs to go the whole season.

Anyway, Alabama lost Dee Miliner (first round, would be senior), Nico Johnson (fourth round, graduated), Jesse Williams (fifth round, graduated), and Robert Lester (undrafted, graduated).

You know how many Stanford defensive players from last season were drafted or considered notable free agents? 0

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All that does is tell me Stanford is doing more with less, particularly against tempo offenses.

I'm sure Alabama will have more players drafted this year, too. Yet Stanford didn't trail Alabama by much in total defense (16th, compared to 5th for Alabama, both excellent figures), faced more tempo teams and had a far narrower standard deviation in terms of results.

The problem here is not what Alabama is doing against pro-style teams. The problem is what Alabama is doing against tempo offenses. Alabama's defense is virtually impenetrable against what most of the SEC and many other teams run, but if other offenses are going tempo and Alabama craps the bed three times out of six defensively against those teams, you seriously think the best course of action is to not change?

And, if Alabama keeps recruiting at the level it currently recruits, accelerated turnover in the roster isn't going to stop. Which means, it has to be dealt with, otherwise it just becomes an excuse.

REBELZED said:

Jess, I always appreciate your insight, but I don't quite understand the sudden infatuation with Stanford? I never thought I'd see you insist that Alabama should try to be more like Stanford...

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I'm interested in what teams who can stop the tempo offense are doing. Stanford does it on a consistent basis; Alabama has had very mixed results with it over the past seven seasons. The bigger issue is not the results, it's the philosophy. There's enough body of work on the table now for Alabama's coaches to take a hard look at what they're doing and ask questions as to whether certain changes can or should be made while keeping the basics of the scheme.

Also, what you didn't mention about either of those two Stanford losses was what the Stanford offense did in either game: They scored 21 points against Utah and 17 against USC. This isn't a discussion about Alabama looking like Stanford as a whole; it's a discussion about what takeaways there are to be had from looking at the SU defense against tempo teams. It's a very narrow discussion point, so let's not try to take it places it shouldn't go.

Bryant Ave said:

Has Nick Saban ever run a 4-3? A couple of 6-5 240lb 4.5 defensive ends would seem to do be more adaptable to all the offenses because of the increase in speed. Vinnie used to be a tweener, but we probably would have won both games with about 4 similar players of similar size, speed and smarts. Vinnie would probably make a good linebacker against a HUNH.

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I don't think he's ever run a pure 4-3 but I don't think that's necessarily the answer, either. First and foremost, it changes your entire defensive front seven recruiting strategy and you may not get the payoff you're looking for.

In a 3-4 over/under, the lineup is typically a big nose (300+ pounds, preferably 330+) with a couple of DE/T combo players who go 270 or so. Then the LB corps usually is a Mike (even though the LB group is even-numbered) in the 240-250-pound range, a Will at around 230, and then you have the OLB components. The SLB is rarely on the field, because he's the first guy off when the nickel comes on. The other side is the Jack.

What Alabama has been doing, when it goes to nickel, has been to remove the SLB, put the Jack down at end and go to a four-man, shaded front, with the nose still right over center or in the strongside A-gap. The LBs then typically shade to the weakside a bit. When Alabama started going really big at the SLB position, what started happening is that Alabama also took one of the DEs off the field and moved the SLB down to end, so the alignment looked like this: SLB-NT-WDE-Jack. Alabama plays its base defense -- I'm just taking a semi-wild guess here -- about 10 percent of the time nowadays. Alabama is almost always in a 4-2-5, 3-3-5 or 3-2-6 setup.

What makes this different from the traditional 4-3 is the linebackers in a 4-3 usually have a Mike going around 240 flanked by OLBs in the 210-to-220-pound range. When the nickel comes on, they drop one of the OLBs, then drop the other one in dime so you end up with a 4-1-6, which Alabama runs sometimes (typically with the dime walked up into a LB slot; this was the defense Alabama used almost exclusively against Auburn in 2009 with Ali Sharrief basically playing LB).

Tennessee changed from a 3-4 over/under to a 4-3 this year and you saw what happened. Daniel McCullers was rendered pretty much ineffective, because they were asking him to attack rather than mush and he didn't have the feet for it. In addition, Tennessee's OLBs were too big to drop back into the WLB and SLB slots, and when UT lost Curt Maggitt the wheels came off. It takes about 2-3 years to make that transition.

The intermediate step between these two is the 3-3-5 base that Joe Kines used -- you basically get the line of a 3-4 with the linebackers from a 4-3; i.e., smaller all over -- except Kines was also resurrecting the old Miami opposite-shoulder, inside-out philosophy, where everything got funneled outside and the defense used superior speed to make the play. That's why Alabama's OLBs were Terrence Jones (210 pounds) and Demarcus Waldrop (200); they were basically safeties. Kines used a big nose who had two-gap responsibilities, stuck a big Mike (Matt Collins that last year) behind him and then funneled everything out to the edges. When Saban got here, Collins went to DE and only got about a dozen snaps his senior year, because he didn't fit the new scheme. The Mike in Saban's defense is asked to do a million different things. The other big change were Keith Saunders and Brandon Fanney going from tackle to outside linebacker. Eryk Anders, if you remember, was going to be a tackle (!) in Kines' defense.

It can be easy to swap between the 3-4 and the 3-3-5, depending on what the makeup of your outside positions look like. Oklahoma was able to flex between the two all year long, particularly after they lost Corey Nelson at midseason. But that was because their outside personnel had been scaled down to keep up with the outside speed of Big 12 offenses.

Alabama's scheme issue here is that the defense is slow on the corners. The Jacks and ends struggle setting the edge because the mush technique makes them vulnerable to getting zoned on the play. Unfortunately, you either have to recruit a guy for a specific situation, and not play him when the situation isn't there, or you have to sort of restructure the philosophy up front.