Difficulties with the AU Offense

JBama_in_PCOLA said:

When we made the change at corner to Sylve AUs offense was pedestrian!

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Maybe because, last I hear (pre-Brown), Sylve was the fastest guy on the team. Coates kept running right by Jackson.
JMO

Hooks4bama said:

It's hard to run 40yd deep streaks from the red zone. That is their bread and butter. Shear speed and hail mary like passing.

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^^^This^^^

There is your answer. API had to change what they could run, and they did not have ability to do anything, with a shortened field. Gus complained how they failed to score TDs. He apparently failed to understand why.

B1GTide said:

You did not face Auburn's standard offense last night. They were a pass first team last night. They knew that they were outgunned so they just decided to throw it deep early and often and hope that their WRs could make the catches. The problems with that approach are two-fold: the results are all or nothing on each drive & you can't do it anymore when you are in the red zone as there just isn't enough room to create separation.

Alabama's defense prepared for the 2013 Auburn offense and you could tell that they were not prepared for what they faced. The halftime adjustments ended that. I am actually pretty proud of the way that your defense played given the number of plays run by Auburn (90) and how tired they must have been when they clamped down. The Alabama comeback would not have been possible without the defensive effort. You went on a 34-3 run. Yes, the offense put up 34 - but the defense held Auburn to only 3 points during that stretch. Against this offense, after that many plays, that was simply amazing.

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yep. agreed 100%. the chuck and pray can get a defense back on its heels and reeling, but it can also be feast or famine as we saw last nite

KrAzY3 said:

We heard the same thing about Texas A&M did we not? We saw similar results for two years in a row, did we not? What happened this year? I recall a shut out, don't you? I've long argued that experience was the issue, and the third year of seeing Texas A&M's offense sure seemed to do wonders, eh?

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No offense but, I don't think that beat down was completely because it was our third year seeing their attack. I think it had more to do with no Johnny Football and they are just a bad team without him.

I think last night's game will be a turning point for Bama defending the HUNH. Don't know why, I just do. Our defense didn't seem confused anymore and we were much more decisive. Even though there were still mistakes, we hit their backs and receivers harder and started playing the ball better. The intimidation factor disappeared at halftime.

One me thing I noticed is that, before halftime, we weren't getting good hits in at all, we were letting them land softly. In the second half, we started hitting them straight-up, you heard some crunching, some thuds, etcetera. That sends a message. If a boxer lands enough body blows on his opponent, the opponent can't put as much force behind his punches anymore...his will power itself suffers. I thought we saw that last night a little. In the second half they were hitting the hole slightly less hard, getting to the edge a fraction-of-a-second slower. Auburn, despite the fact that they run it up the middle a lot, is not a power team. If they were they wouldn't need confusion to help them every single play. We showed them that we were the meaner team.

bamaga said:

Yeah, who would of thought that? Eddie Jackson had a horrible game. He has been the most solid corner. Teams just didn't throw at him this year. Auburn plays an almost sandlot style of football and Eddie had the guy running the go route on every play. Maybe his Knee just wasn't up to it? Maybe he was winded, or maybe it was just a bad day.

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He bit on a couple of double moves and underneath routes. Maybe Marshall pump-faked when he did that cause I thought we were in man. But on one touchdown pass Eddie Jackson started coming forward to cover an underneath route, then had to jump back on Coates' route. Recipe for disaster IMO.

First of all, you can't just say, Well if you take away their big plays then we shut them down. That is true for any team in any game. Those big plays are normally set up with a lot of game planning leading up to the game and then using other plays to set up the big plays during the game. Can't just throw those out.

Second, and more importantly, I still think we are in the midst of changing (I hope) defensive philosophies, somewhat. On all the big pass plays NM just dropped straight back, sat in his "spot" and launched rockets down the field with no pressure at all. When we got a push up front (mainly with the second half adjustments of Evans and Williams) NM was not able to stand back there like a statue and launch the ball downfield. Back to my original point, it doesn't look like we have changed defensive pressure philosophy as much as I thought we had. It looks like our defensive scheme is to just keep the defensive lineman in their rush lanes and push the pocket - not necessarily pressure the QB. I think we will continue have problems until we put in our true pass rush guys (Evans, Williams, Hand etc) to not only put more pressure on the QB with the front 4 but also to keep contain on the edge plays. Lake and Ivory were in quite a bit last night, and nothing against those guys, but IMO they don't have any business playing a lot of snaps against HUNH teams. Most plays they would just stand up and lean on the offensive lineman - no push at all. Lake and Ivory are very good against teams like Arkansas and LSU - pro style teams, not the fastball teams.

Last point, Gus is a really good offensive coach. AU has had great talent on that side of the ball pretty consistently since 2010. With NM, Coates, CAP, and Duke, it doesn't really matter what offense you are running. It's more about the personnel than the scheme they are running. When Chris Todd was the starter at AU they were horrible..

We made Auburn left handed by forcing them to pass...they succeeded at passing it deep.


I don't think our staff believed Marshall could throw it down field consistently. To be fair, he's been inconsistent all season despite a solid completion percentage. He had a hot hand and it kinda made our defense look dumb.

As stated above, "big plays" were the reason we struggled 3 quarters this year. We just do not have the skill at DBs we have previously had and that nearly cost us in this game. I expect some more world class DBs to suit up next year for the Tide.

The good thing this year, we did stop their run game in the last quarter and they lost their 4 leaf clover, rabbit's foot, etc.

Didn't he recruit the faster..smaller guys for this? I just wonder if at the beginning he didn't think they were ready to play. Then he puts them in and you can see how well they did.


All in all, this is why Gus is such a good offensive coach. I will give credit to him and his offense.

rgw said:

We made Auburn left handed by forcing them to pass...they succeeded at passing it deep.


I don't think our staff believed Marshall could throw it down field consistently. To be fair, he's been inconsistent all season despite a solid completion percentage. He had a hot hand and it kinda made our defense look dumb.

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he was inconsistent last night as well, just not in the first half

If we end up playing Oregon, this game was a good prepper. At least we would know what our weaknesses are before we face the ducks.

Red zone defense has been the key for us all year. We have the bend don't break with the fast offenses. Give us a shorter field to defend and we usually come up with a stop.


I will gladly give up field goals when playing Oregon or FSU. We just have to do what we did against Auburn...score touchdowns instead.

Lets not forget that the 3 best receivers in the SEC (in my humble opinion at least) were on the field last night and Auburn had two of them. Took a chance on single coverage to stop the run but Duke and Coates made plays.

B1GTide said:

You did not face Auburn's standard offense last night. They were a pass first team last night. They knew that they were outgunned so they just decided to throw it deep early and often and hope that their WRs could make the catches. The problems with that approach are two-fold: the results are all or nothing on each drive & you can't do it anymore when you are in the red zone as there just isn't enough room to create separation.

Alabama's defense prepared for the 2013 Auburn offense and you could tell that they were not prepared for what they faced. The halftime adjustments ended that. I am actually pretty proud of the way that your defense played given the number of plays run by Auburn (90) and how tired they must have been when they clamped down. The Alabama comeback would not have been possible without the defensive effort. You went on a 34-3 run. Yes, the offense put up 34 - but the defense held Auburn to only 3 points during that stretch. Against this offense, after that many plays, that was simply amazing.

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It was not their game plan until we stopped them in the red zone the first two drives. At least that was what Gus said in his interview postgame.
I think Gus panicked a little when they couldn't run at will like last year and got away from what they do best with NM at QB.
The chunk and hope worked and it's true the defense wasn't ready for that and didn't play well either.

skipster63 said:

If we end up playing Oregon, this game was a good prepper. At least we would know what our weaknesses are before we face the ducks.

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Or TCU. Or Ohio St. A lot of the teams who may be in the playoffs are similar.

We have a history of making average or above average QBs look like All-Americans.

Last night it seemed to me that Auburn was just faster than us at the RB and WR positions. There were numerous times we had a contain guy in position when the RB got the ball in the backfield and he just outran our guy to the edge; and we just couldn't keep up with their receivers. Didn't help that last night their receivers could have caught fish in the desert either.

If our strategy was to bend but not break and hold them to FGs and then outscore them by scoring TDs, then well done coaching staff. Well done. If this is our strategy going forward, I'm worried about potentially playing Oregon.

Well I can understand the players playing a little tight at first, but they loosened up in the second half. I'd play tight too if I had seen death threats from some psycho fans first hand (like with some previous losses) . Things like that mess with players' minds.

B1GTide said:

You did not face Auburn's standard offense last night. They were a pass first team last night. They knew that they were outgunned so they just decided to throw it deep early and often and hope that their WRs could make the catches. The problems with that approach are two-fold: the results are all or nothing on each drive & you can't do it anymore when you are in the red zone as there just isn't enough room to create separation.

Alabama's defense prepared for the 2013 Auburn offense and you could tell that they were not prepared for what they faced. The halftime adjustments ended that. I am actually pretty proud of the way that your defense played given the number of plays run by Auburn (90) and how tired they must have been when they clamped down. The Alabama comeback would not have been possible without the defensive effort. You went on a 34-3 run. Yes, the offense put up 34 - but the defense held Auburn to only 3 points during that stretch. Against this offense, after that many plays, that was simply amazing.

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Brilliant post as usual B1GTide! good job.

skipster63 said:

If we end up playing Oregon, this game was a good prepper. At least we would know what our weaknesses are before we face the ducks.

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and hopefully we won't gift them with three scores