Fix our deep ball defense.

To me it has been fixed. The play's they had were busted plays. I'm not worried going forward. Some seem gun-shy from the Auburn game.


Sent from my iPhone 6 Plus RTR

If I were an opposing coach, I would throw 4 hail mary's to start the game against us. Then I would keep doing it until it stopped working.

That is probably why I'm not a coach.

JBama_in_PCOLA said:

To me it has been fixed. The play's they had were busted plays. I'm not worried going forward. Some seem gun-shy from the Auburn game.


Sent from my iPhone 6 Plus RTR

Click to expand...

But the problem is Mauke threw those balls while scrambling. Marriota and Winston do that all the time and are good at it with really good receivers. I think it is a valid question. We do have problems in this area.

It's happened in more than than just the past two games. One can point to yesterday's games and claim 'busted plays,' which those certainly were; but, busted or not, they still completed deep balls on us. This trend goes all the way back to the WV game. Don't think Oregon and FSU aren't licking their chops at the prospect of going deep on us.

Right now, IMO, defending the deep pass and FG kicking are our team's only weaknesses.

I think that Alabama needs to focus on hail mary defense with a standard defense set on the field (no extra DBs). Make DBs learn to deal with these long plays when the QB scrambles and gives a WR 10 seconds to get open.

The reality - even NFL DBs struggle on these plays, but they are low percentage plays so you don't see them very often. My personal opinion is that Alabama is just getting horribly bad luck on these plays. You forced Mauk to make passes while scrambling to his left, across his body, way down the field and along the sideline. He had to make perfect passes AND hope that his WRs made great catches.

Don't change anything on defense other than maybe practicing this a little more.

trenda said:

It's happened in more than than just the past two games. One can point to yesterday's games and claim 'busted plays,' which those certainly were; but, busted or not, they still completed deep balls on us. This trend goes all the way back to the WV game. Don't think Oregon and FSU aren't licking their chops at the prospect of going deep on us.

Right now, IMO, defending the deep pass and FG kicking are our team's only weaknesses.

Click to expand...

Your early struggles have been corrected. On those plays, teams like WVU had receivers running wide open because of busted coverages. The plays in the last few weeks were not a result of busted coverages. Your coverages were actually pretty tight considering the length of time that the DBs were asked to stay with these receivers.

BamaDMD said:

But the problem is Mauke threw those balls while scrambling. Marriota and Winston do that all the time and are good at it with really good receivers. I think it is a valid question. We do have problems in this area.

Click to expand...

Cool, but 2 passes over a 60 min game is hardly something to get worked up over.


Sent from my iPhone 6 Plus RTR

Seems to be a consistency issue. With Auburn, EJ was not on track and getting burned. Last night, Geno was off and EJ was back on track. If everyone back there will bring their A game, I think we will be ok. But I think we lose focus sometimes and when we do we pay for it big time. EJ was caught looking into the backfield against Auburn instead of paying attention to his man. Maybe Geno learned from this game to stay focused. But in all those cases, the QBs made great passes.

Three passes where the QB was scrambling for life and just chunked a hail mary type pass. They were not calculated, precision throws and reads.
I think the first one he was actually trying to throw it away out of bounds and messed up.
I also believe all three were against safeties not CB in coverage.

The one TD was an obvious pick play.

Yes there is still improvement to be made but it wasn't anything like the Aub game.

the problem with these plays is our dbs and safeties are having to cover wrs for 10+ seconds. That is hard to do. Plus the other team has had extremely good luck of putting the ball on target under duress.

One of the good things about preparing for the post season is we will go through a mini training camp and self scout some things to work on.

This defense isn't the great 2011 defense, but they are still ranked 11th in the nation.

The Noles are 52nd and the Ducks are 82nd to give some perspective.

trenda said:

It's happened in more than than just the past two games. One can point to yesterday's games and claim 'busted plays,' which those certainly were; but, busted or not, they still completed deep balls on us. This trend goes all the way back to the WV game. Don't think Oregon and FSU aren't licking their chops at the prospect of going deep on us.

Right now, IMO, defending the deep pass and FG kicking are our team's only weaknesses.

Click to expand...

Well said, and I think you hit the nail on the head.

There is no defense against a heave off the back foot with a 300lb lineman in your face and where the ball sails 40 yards up field to the sideline and arrives at the same time as a receiver and two DBs.

Or rather, the defensive plan IS the 300lb liner and the two DBs. There is no offensive plan in this case.

Being more physical at the line is really all we need to get better at. Knocking the receiver off his route from the start will add time to the play and allow our front 7 to disrupt the pass.

Lassr4Bama said:

the problem with these plays is our dbs and safeties are having to cover wrs for 10+ seconds. That is hard to do.

Click to expand...

I dont think the problem is maintaining coverage. Our players have been right on the receivers every time The problem is how our players attack the ball in the air. It seems like we just arent judging the ball correctly or getting pushed off. Often I see a safety showing up late, which makes me wonder about speed at that position. Whatever the reason, it has been constant throughout the season.

trenda said:

It's happened in more than than just the past two games. One can point to yesterday's games and claim 'busted plays,' which those certainly were; but, busted or not, they still completed deep balls on us. This trend goes all the way back to the WV game. Don't think Oregon and FSU aren't licking their chops at the prospect of going deep on us.

Right now, IMO, defending the deep pass and FG kicking are our team's only weaknesses.

Click to expand...

At the very least...

And if we look back prior to this season, I have angst ridden memories of Manziel having had torched us in this manner as well...

It just seems to strain credulity that it can happen so often.

I mean, it feels like the ball is in the air forever, and the guy still makes the reception...

How many threads we gonna see ppl gonna bring up deep ball issues.... It'll be fine. The deep ball we saw the last two games were pretty much flukes...

They can ho deep all they want,I just hope we tackle the receiver before he scores because at that point inside the twenty we have the edge and they are likely to only get a field goal. I would wish it didn't happen but it does ,,give up the yards but don't give up the score. Our defense is pretty tough inside the twenty.

Rush said:

At the very least...

And if we look back prior to this season, I have angst ridden memories of Manziel having had torched us in this manner as well...

It just seems to strain credulity that it can happen so often.

I mean, it feels like the ball is in the air forever, and the guy still makes the reception...

Click to expand...

Yep. Our guys just need to keep their eye on the ball. It's simple. Look for the ball. Hopefully coach addresses this because if we played the ball better, we'd be awful nasty.