Exactly. You take what the defense gives you. You can do the other to set up the other.
Agreed - In last night's game, our game plan was centered around the running game but it became clear early on that their tight coverage was causing problems for Cardale. He was taking too long to make decisions and deliver the ball. But our O-Line was dominating them, so we just started running the ball with no regard to down or distance. 3rd and long? No problem - run the ball. Receivers covered? No problem - tuck it and run the ball. Why force something in the passing game when you are killing them at the LOS?
+1 and I think you're right about the strategy - take what the defense will give you.
Good observations...congrats to OSU and to you...a classy fan -- which all schools need in abundance.
B1GTide I agree with you about the Sugar Bowl. Congrats on the NC. I too enjoy your posts.......Roll Tide.....
We should have won the game. Yes OSU was a really good team but let's not pretend like they were so good that we couldn't have won the game. Coaching and our inability to defend the pass is what lost us that game. Give OSU their props. They had a good team and a great year. But our staff's inability to recognize trends within the game and our weakness at secondary got us beat.
We sure had our chances. There were two potentially really big and very makeable plays that Bama failed to make in that game that really affected momentum: White's dropped pass on 3rd and 2 in Q2 and Cyrus Jones' dropped pick six in Q3.
And our refusal to run Henry when OSU had shown ZERO ability to stop him. 13 carries at 7.5 yds/carry makes me sick every time I think about it. I was anticipating in his postgame presser Meyer saying "I want to think the Alabama staff for not running #27. We really, really do appreciate that."
Indeed. I watched that game a second time this past week and Henry wasn't just running successfully over LT, he was ripping it right up the gut for five or ten yards now and then too.
I agree about the DBs and LBs but we'll never know about the depth at RB- unfortunately, we didn't see Tyren Jones who runs a lot like OSU's Elliott. I think he could have had a real impact on that game. I thought the OL improved a lot over this season but definitely short of what we fielded in 2011 and 2012.
Our pass defense has got to get better or we won't sniff another national title. When you get into the bigger games against the better teams they will pick at that weakness like a sore.
I would disagree at least to the extent that in-game trends relate to DB play. I think the staff knew quite well all of the problems it had, and did what it could to mitigate them, but at that point it is entirely too late to do anything about them. If you want to blame overall poor DB recruiting from 2010-2013, I would be on board with that, and to me that was the staff's real shortcoming.
