GOOD:
Tim Williams, Dalvin Tomlinson, Jonathan Allen, Ryan Anderson, Reuben Foster, DJ Pettway, Tony Brown, Reggie Ragland...they all had whales of individual games.
On offense: Cooper Bateman. Took chances and gave his WRs a chance to be playmakers. Tried to fit a lot of passes into tight spaces. TJ Yeldon managed to quietly put up nearly 100 yds behind a suspect o-line and bad QB play (more on that later). Kenyan Drake. Ardarius Stewart. Robert Foster. Chris Black. All having solid individual contributions.
Alec Morris doing an excellent job as a punter. And not just a "oh he punts well for a QB" kinda deal. He actually kicked it high and well.
Bad :
Landon Collins whiffed on a few tackles today. Had Yeldon dead to rights and let him get by for another 15 yds. Had knockout shots on Cooper a couple of times and let up (can't say I blame him...and I'm glad he did). Dropped an easy pick.
Kenyan Drake, as good as he looked, put the ball on the ground and it translated to points for the opposition.
Reuben Foster. The kid is a headhunter. Played a whale of a game. A half at least. Had two knockout shots on Drake. Took them both, but failed to wrap up on either one. The first one led to a second effort 1st down for Drake. The 2nd led to another stinger.
Ugly:
No two ways to put it, Blake Sims had a terrible outing despite the late TD pass (which was against walk-ons). And it goes beyond mechanics. He was called for a penalty late that would have been a 10 second runoff and ended the game. There were a few times where I saw Christion Jones frantically trying to get the play from him at the line. He just didn't show good command of the offense from where I was sitting.
Offensive line play was...offensive....for both squads. The pick 6 that DJ Pettway got was because Freshman LT Cam Robinson blocked the wrong man on the screen play. The 1st team offensive line looked better than the 2nd team but that's not saying much. They still didn't do much in opening running lanes for Yeldon and Henry and Sims rarely got a chance to see cleanly down the field. The second team offensive line made our 2nd team d-line look like the love child of the Steel Curtain and Purple People Eaters.
Our place kicking was just....BAD. The only thing that worked was the snapping..so kudos to Cole Mazza for that. But we have a new holder (AJ & Mandell our 1 & 2 holders from last year, are gone) and of course a new kicker. Griffin was the guy we went and got after the home loss to LSU in 2011. I was under the impression that he was The One. But to hear Coach Saban say that there will be competition in the fall when JK Scott gets here REALLY concerns me. I mean...REALLY concerns me.
Worst case scenario, we got a strong defense with plenty of playmakers. Maybe they'll have to carry us this year.
BONUS Good:
We got 5 commitments today (4 from Top 100 players) and more coming.
5-star CB Minkah Fitzpatrick
5-star WR Calvin Ridley
4-star ATH Shawn Burgess-Becker
4-star LB Leo Lewis
4-starWR Jovon Durante
ALL of them recruited by Mario Cristobal
