JessN: WVU wrap-up: Holes are easy to find in 2014 Tide

JessN said:

WVU wrap-up: Holes are easy to find in 2014 Tide
by Jess Nicholas
TideFans Editor-In-Chief
August 30th, 2014 09:10 PM

. By Jess Nicholas, TideFans.com Editor-In-Chief Aug. 30, 2014 . Nick Saban is known for making very salient, wise and perceptive statements, which is why many observers claim he would be just as at home running a multi-billion-dollar company as he would a football team. . Saban may have made his most apt comment yet […]

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The Bama back 7 looked like they were playing on a field 100 yards wide while the drop-off in linebacker play was monumental through most of the game. The defensive line strengthened in the middle, but they continue to look out of place at the speed in which the game suddenly is being played, like Imperial Walkers.

Best headline of the night: Blake Sims looked like an Alabama quarterback, THE Alabama quarterback.

Offense: Sims did a pretty good job for his first game. Short passes were on, longer passes were not.
Sims throws across and back into the middle of the field were ill advised. Interception...
Receivers did a pretty good job. Running game was good.
The Offensive line did a pretty good job. Sims had time to throw or run out of the pocket.

Special teams played so so overall.
Kicking was good in all phases of the game. Returns were spotty...
Our return guys did pretty well. WV returned one 100 yards. Guys out of position on that one.

Defense: Generally played poorly. Defense acted like they had never heard of Hurry up offenses.
Defense failed to pass rush.
Defense seemed to be 5-10 yards away from most receivers.
For the most part our Defense was not close enough to make an interception.

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED... We did win.
WV was improved over last year.
We kept WV in the game by allowing them to pass at will.

We learned that we still have a problem with Hurry up Offenses.
The whole of college football knows of our weakness in this area. We were unorganized...
We confirmed that our kicking game is good.
We learned that Sims is light years removed from his poor performance at A-Day.

Hope we make the big improvement between game one and game two, that we should make.

I hope our guys learned today that they aren't good enough to beat SEC schools without giving it their best effort.

I was thinking which of Saban's previous Bama teams I would compare this one to after one game. I'm thinking his second one in 2008. QB's are similar in Wilson and Sims and the defense is still young and inexperienced. Hope we see steady improve like we did with that one during the season.

Not aimed at JessN but some of these folks need to rewatch this game. Seriously. Watch the OL without the emotion. Watch the backs and receivers. Watch the TEs blocking. The defense was also making fixable mistakes. "Soft" was the word Saban used. They got the message and made plays when they needed too. I think WV is going to be a little better than some folks think. Oh well I guess some people just love the view from the ledge because they always seem like they post from it.

jessN, I think your comments are correct, but, I make further opinions on the game. I don't see bama winning the west, much less the sec with sims at qb. 5 year player, and kiffin, saban had to stay within sideline reach of their qb to control his play. the only time he looked comfortable was when they went to no huddle. the completed a lot of 5 and 6 yard sideline passes to star receiver cooper. excellent rush game. no middle of field pass plays. did know howard was in the game. off line looks good. def line was bad, until they moved robinson into nose guard, that stopped their rush game. linebackers appeared slow to the ball or playing coverage. corners were once again bad. same as last year. bring on brown, Jackson, Humphrey. receivers excellent, made many hard catches at their knees. kicking game a major improvement. special team coverage loose. not a solid sec team starting, still gun shy with the hurry up offenses. just think we have the second best qb from fla st, and not ready for the sec. trickett sure made a good transition, Winston pretty good. and jimbo fisher said coker was even with Winston.

Take out the Kickoff return, and this is a 33-16 ballgame in which WVU has been put away by the half.

Our angst is because of the following:
- Trickett looked good and we fear there are much better QB's
- Their WRs looked good and we fear that other teams won't drop as many
- In our mind's eye, we expected a swarming front 7 that would be much more effective at 3-and-outs
- We had high hopes for Sylve but he got badly burned multiple times. We fear that the current generation of big receivers will have success against our secondary
- Sims was adequate but we hoped for more production from Howard, Drake, and WRs not named Cooper. The INT put WVU back into the game.
- We fear that better teams will jump to a 17 or 21 point lead and that Sims is not a comeback threat.

Against this, the traditional Alabama virtues were present:
- We kept to our pounding game plan that appeared to keep the game close in the first half.
- In fact they were using up their players, energy and play book while we execute a simple plan based on crushing the opposition with unlimited depth.
- The huge guys up front on both sides of the ball gradually dominated their counterparts, not the other way round.
- Our run game started decent and became dominant. I would have liked to have seen them go for 4th-and-short.

Saban remarked that losing Trey for this game had a big impact. It slightly worries me that we don't have a more athletic-sized body underneath DePriest's head, but we don't know how he has developed during the off-season.

I'm not yet seeing a championship-caliber team, and we should prepare for the worst for the LSU, A&M and Barn games. But Saban says he likes the team's attitude, and I am hopeful that there is enough time to coach them up before Florida comes to town.

I believe in this team. That is all.


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CB4 said:

I was thinking which of Saban's previous Bama teams I would compare this one to after one game. I'm thinking his second one in 2008. QB's are similar in Wilson and Sims and the defense is still young and inexperienced. Hope we see steady improve like we did with that one during the season.

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this entire game reminded me of the season opener vs va tech in 2009, except sims looked better than mcelroy in his debut

bamacon said:

Not aimed at JessN but some of these folks need to rewatch this game. Seriously. Watch the OL without the emotion. Watch the backs and receivers. Watch the TEs blocking. The defense was also making fixable mistakes. "Soft" was the word Saban used. They got the message and made plays when they needed too. I think WV is going to be a little better than some folks think. Oh well I guess some people just love the view from the ledge because they always seem like they post from it.

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agreed, every problem i saw yesterday is a fixable problem.

bamanix said:

jessN, I think your comments are correct, but, I make further opinions on the game. I don't see bama winning the west, much less the sec with sims at qb. 5 year player, and kiffin, saban had to stay within sideline reach of their qb to control his play. the only time he looked comfortable was when they went to no huddle. the completed a lot of 5 and 6 yard sideline passes to star receiver cooper. excellent rush game. no middle of field pass plays. did know howard was in the game. off line looks good. def line was bad, until they moved robinson into nose guard, that stopped their rush game. linebackers appeared slow to the ball or playing coverage. corners were once again bad. same as last year. bring on brown, Jackson, Humphrey. receivers excellent, made many hard catches at their knees. kicking game a major improvement. special team coverage loose. not a solid sec team starting, still gun shy with the hurry up offenses. just think we have the second best qb from fla st, and not ready for the sec. trickett sure made a good transition, Winston pretty good. and jimbo fisher said coker was even with Winston.

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blake had several tight completions across the middle the field to extend drives.

I do have to say one thing Jess. D. White was having a heck of a game before he got hurt. Amari wasn't catching all the passes.


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92tide said:

blake had several tight completions across the middle the field to extend drives.

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That's what I thought. He had some very good throws to a slanting WR in the middle of the field.

I agree with Jess' assessment that the DB's were bad, the LB's struggled in coverage and the DL didn't interrupt the offense. However, seeing how the other SEC teams played this weekend, Auburn and aTm are the 2 teams that worry me.

Trey DePriest being out made Foster make the calls, something he isn't comfortable doing. Getting Trey back not only puts our top LB on the field but, solves the call issues. Saban said their were communication issues between the LB and DB's. While I agree Sylve was horrible, how much of the other issues were not being 100% sure of the call? The Dline play has to improve but, as the announcers mentioned, A'Shawn was out of place and moving from end to NT is a big switch.

We have the next two weeks to get Humphrey, Brown and Jackson game experience and confidence. We also can use these games to shore up the Dline rotation.

FAU & So Miss will be over before the half. UF will be a good test for us but, I don't see them playing is closer than WV. Arky and Ole Miss IMO are not teams to worry about. We can't just show up but, we should be both 9 out of 10 times.

This leads to Texas A&M. Right now, I'd say they would be 2 TD favorites. But, by the time 10/18 rolls around our QB will be settled and aTm's defense is still suspect. If our DB's improve, we can beat them. Win or lose to aTm, Tennesee, Miss St, and our last non conference games are victories unless we just play as bad as we can.

That leaves LSU and AU. LSU did not impress me. No reason to believe we can't beat them by 2 TD's. Beat LSU AND the AU game probably decides the SEC West. We match up very well with LSU and we will be ready for AU.

11-1 (7-1) will win the west.

DrollTide said:

Take out the Kickoff return, and this is a 33-16 ballgame in which WVU has been put away by the half.




I'm not yet seeing a championship-caliber team, and we should prepare for the worst for the LSU, A&M and Barn games. But Saban says he likes the team's attitude, and I am hopeful that there is enough time to coach them up before Florida comes to town.

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Bamabuzzard said:

Did you see LSU play? If it weren't for Wisconsin losing three of their starters on the defensive line due to injury LSU would have lost that game. They were controlling the LOS all game then as soon as those three DL'men went out it was over. LSU started gashing them. LSU, like us, has a long way to go to contend for the SEC West. Right now Auburn and aTm are possibly better.

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Or, for that matter, the consensus current number one team and current National Champs? They got lucky to beat OSU (who I understand was also unranked). Some people don't seem to understand this is the first game of the year, and forgot the VT game the year Bama won the NC. Did FSU play like National Champs? I don't think so.
It's early folks, wait until the Florida game - something tells me the team you see by then will be nothing like the team you saw yesterday.

JessN said:

Let me address this about the QB situation and the "we can't win the SEC with Sims" argument.

1. First, why would the coaches start Sims ahead of Coker if Sims wasn't the better option? They've seen them both in practice for a month. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened with Coker: He came in from FSU, the coaches expected him to compete for the job (and probably win it) but he couldn't pick up the offense. This is a football team, not a charity case -- no one is going to start Sims unless he's the best.

2. So with that being said, if Alabama can't win the SEC with Sims, Alabama can't win the SEC.

3. And now I'll give you this stat to close: 43-of-83 (51.8%), 359 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT. Those were the numbers of Greg McElroy for a three-game stretch in the middle of the 2009 season (Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee). In the middle game, South Carolina, he threw for 92 yards. People were calling for Star Jackson. I remember, I was here and writing about it. Alabama won the league (with relative ease, if you want to be honest about it) and then the national championship.

The fact of the matter is, no one knows exactly how good Jake Coker is. And he might not be very good in a scrimmage situation. He has a tremendous set of raw skills, perhaps the best mix of raw ability Alabama has had in decades. But there's a difference between throwing drills or 7-on-7 routes and going 11-on-11 with a live rush. The notion that Alabama is holding him back like out of a bad Hollywood script is just fiction.

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Amen. The longest walk in sports is from potential to performance: Who can do it when it matters?

I'm starting to wonder what people are looking at when they watched Blake Sims' first game -- by the way, we don't win without him -- and say he can't lead the team.

Absolutely, Buzzard. One last thing: the field goal at the end of the half illustrates Sims' value. He made all the throws, and we haven't had a quarterback in 30 years who could have made that 20-yard run.