JessN: A-Day Review: Alabama will win with defense in 2015

JessN

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A-Day Review: Alabama will win with defense in 2015
by Jess Nicholas
TideFans Editor-In-Chief
April 19th, 2015 12:16 AM

. By Jess Nicholas TideFans.com Editor-In-Chief April 18, 2015 If Alabama is going to be successful in the immediate future, it must go back to its not-so-immediate past. Alabama’s first-string defense almost pitched a shutout in Saturday’s A-Day game, holding the second-team offense scoreless until the final minute of the game, when Blake Barnett – […]

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bamanix

1st Team
Mar 24, 2010
528
0
0
the vanilla spring game is had to judge the game level. yes, qb, is perplexing, but, I have no doubt that coker looks the better so far. even though he had two interceptions, he really had strong throws deep and short. quick release compared to the other qbs. my concerns are with depth at off line, rb. very pleased with defensive front tough def 7 and with depth. evans, Dillon, Williams, and Tomlinson were exceptional, finally some speed again on the outside. defense is going to have to control the early season, and hope that that henry, drake stay healthy. I sure hope harris can help depth wise when he comes in.
 

Tides_of_Change

1st Team
Sep 27, 2012
459
0
0
A couple years back, I never would've thought depth at RB would be one of the biggest issues for an upcoming season. With Drake not getting hit yet post injury and Henry's natural hesitation between the gaps, I hope Damien Harris shares a bus bench with Lester Cotton (not saying they could both fit on one, but you get the idea. )
 

Gr8hope

All-American
Nov 10, 2010
3,408
1
60
Good assessment Jess, thanks. I would like to add encouragement on QBs that Blake's performance on A-Day was far less impressive than the fall season. Hopefully we see improvement similar to what we did with Sims.
 

CoachJeff

Suspended
Jan 21, 2014
3,596
3,654
187
Shelby County Alabama
In 2015 I don't think anyone will win with defense. The rules favor the offense. The D should be better, but it's more about outscoring the other guys now than stopping them.
 

CoolBreeze

Hall of Fame
Sep 18, 2002
8,596
7,749
287
57
Hoover
A couple years back, I never would've thought depth at RB would be one of the biggest issues for an upcoming season. With Drake not getting hit yet post injury and Henry's natural hesitation between the gaps, I hope Damien Harris shares a bus bench with Lester Cotton (not saying they could both fit on one, but you get the idea. )
Damien Harris is going to turn some heads immediately. I look for him to break into the rotation as a true frosh.
 

jdua

Scout Team
Nov 19, 2006
122
43
52
In 2015 I don't think anyone will win with defense. The rules favor the offense. The D should be better, but it's more about outscoring the other guys now than stopping them.
That is exactly correct......coaches have not been able to get any rule changes through to recalibrate the offense-centric status quo, which means you have to out score people and that's just the way it is. It may be arena football but if that's what we have to do to win, I still want to win, although I have no doubt that our defense will be about as good as the rules allow.
 

RollTide1224

All-American
Feb 18, 2008
2,385
87
67
Spartanburg, SC
In 2015 I don't think anyone will win with defense. The rules favor the offense. The D should be better, but it's more about outscoring the other guys now than stopping them.
The last few national champions have all had very good defenses. There's no doubt you need an explosive offense in a couple games to get through undefeated, but a dominant defense covers for a lot still. I think we can still win with dominant d and an efficient offense.
 

JessN

Administrator & Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Oct 13, 1999
6,269
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the vanilla spring game is had to judge the game level. yes, qb, is perplexing, but, I have no doubt that coker looks the better so far. even though he had two interceptions, he really had strong throws deep and short. quick release compared to the other qbs. my concerns are with depth at off line, rb. very pleased with defensive front tough def 7 and with depth. evans, Dillon, Williams, and Tomlinson were exceptional, finally some speed again on the outside. defense is going to have to control the early season, and hope that that henry, drake stay healthy. I sure hope harris can help depth wise when he comes in.
The thing that troubles me about Coker is his ability to pull the trigger and trust it. The play that had me pulling my hair out was a pass Robert Foster caught out of bounds outside the end zone in front of the band. Foster broke open immediately on his cut -- which happened to take place at the post. The ball needs to be out right then. Instead, Coker waited until Foster had gotten within about five steps of the sideline to throw it, so of course it went out of bounds. And it wasn't that he didn't see him -- Coker was staring Foster down the whole time.

Where Blake really shone in the regular season last year was that he was going trust Amari to take care of business at the top of the route no matter what. Alabama's offense needs to be dangerous as a home-run threat in order to open up the running game and the underneath stuff. Especially since UA won't have much of a threat of a QB run this year.
 

bamakeeb

3rd Team
May 2, 2011
247
4
37
I guess I missed it for years. I thought starters went up against starters at the A Game. But I keep in reading about the starting O vs 2nd D. First, that tells me that our two deep on D is freaking awesome. Second, uh, our O could be in trouble. I've been a Coker apologist from the beginning, but we're gonna need more from the QB. His stats look ok but subtract the two long passes and the story changes a lot. Cornwell got better as the game progressed. That's what you want to see. Coker seemed to digress. Being that Cornwell was primarily going against starters, I think he did pretty well.
 

RollTide1224

All-American
Feb 18, 2008
2,385
87
67
Spartanburg, SC
I guess I missed it for years. I thought starters went up against starters at the A Game. But I keep in reading about the starting O vs 2nd D. First, that tells me that our two deep on D is freaking awesome. Second, uh, our O could be in trouble. I've been a Coker apologist from the beginning, but we're gonna need more from the QB. His stats look ok but subtract the two long passes and the story changes a lot. Cornwell got better as the game progressed. That's what you want to see. Coker seemed to digress. Being that Cornwell was primarily going against starters, I think he did pretty well.
I had the same thought, always thought it was first team first team o and second team d as one team and vice versa so each unit is going against their counterpart.
 

gtgilbert

All-American
Aug 12, 2011
3,163
4,024
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A-Day Review: Alabama will win with defense in 2015
by Jess Nicholas
TideFans Editor-In-Chief
April 19th, 2015 12:16 AM

. By Jess Nicholas TideFans.com Editor-In-Chief April 18, 2015 If Alabama is going to be successful in the immediate future, it must go back to its not-so-immediate past. Alabama’s first-string defense almost pitched a shutout in Saturday’s A-Day game, holding the second-team offense scoreless until the final minute of the game, when Blake Barnett – […]

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I'm confused - the article says the first team D almost shutout the second team offense, but we play ones against ones and twos against twos right?
 

RTR91

Super Moderator
Nov 23, 2007
39,407
6
0
Prattville
I guess I missed it for years. I thought starters went up against starters at the A Game. But I keep in reading about the starting O vs 2nd D. First, that tells me that our two deep on D is freaking awesome. Second, uh, our O could be in trouble. I've been a Coker apologist from the beginning, but we're gonna need more from the QB. His stats look ok but subtract the two long passes and the story changes a lot. Cornwell got better as the game progressed. That's what you want to see. Coker seemed to digress. Being that Cornwell was primarily going against starters, I think he did pretty well.
I had the same thought, always thought it was first team first team o and second team d as one team and vice versa so each unit is going against their counterpart.
Saban's opening comments in Thursday's press conference:

We’re sort of excited for the game Saturday. I know the players are excited. Spring practice is an opportunity for players to make significant improvement and we certainly had the opportunity to do that this year. We had quite a few guys who were out or hurt in the spring, which created opportunities to give other people all the reps. Some of those people will still be out for this game. I think this is an opportunity for some guys to get out there and play in a game-like situation, which it’s our philosophy to make this a game-like situation. We do it different than a lot of people in that the first defense and the second offense make up a team and the first offense and the second defense make up a team. So the ones play against the ones and the twos play against the twos for the most part.
 

JessN

Administrator & Editor-in-Chief
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Oct 13, 1999
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It's been fixed now. I kind of got turned around while trying to explain the Barnett switcheroo.
 

gtgilbert

All-American
Aug 12, 2011
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It's been fixed now. I kind of got turned around while trying to explain the Barnett switcheroo.
It's still wrong - all wrong. The first team offense was the white, and they scored 27 points so not close to being shutout till the last minute. The pass Barnett threw at the end of the game was for the white team, increasing their lead, not preventing an almost shutout. The second team offense was the one that struggled to score (with the only points scored for the Crimson team being by the first team defense - against the first offense) until late in the game when Cornwell hit Barrineau for a TD.
 

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