News Article: Nick Saban needs to evaluate staff after bad play-calling dooms Tide in blowout loss

crimsonaudio

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I don't know if we can blame this loss all on the new OC and DC. If we go back and look at all 4 games we played against Clemson we could very easily be 1-3 against these guys. In the very first matchup it took an onside kick and a 95 yd kickoff return to beat them. A year ago we won easily because they had a QB that was not a big passing threat. Dabo has corrected his QB passing problem so going forward we can expect Clemson to have a decent passer. If that's the case then we can't keep counting on trick plays and long kickoff returns to beat them. I don't know what the problem is exactly but I think it's more than high turnover in the coaching staff.
And Bama could easily be 3-1 if not for an uncalled illegal pick play.
 

BamaMark.

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I don't know if we can blame this loss all on the new OC and DC. If we go back and look at all 4 games we played against Clemson we could very easily be 1-3 against these guys. In the very first matchup it took an onside kick and a 95 yd kickoff return to beat them. A year ago we won easily because they had a QB that was not a big passing threat. Dabo has corrected his QB passing problem so going forward we can expect Clemson to have a decent passer. If that's the case then we can't keep counting on trick plays and long kickoff returns to beat them. I don't know what the problem is exactly but I think it's more than high turnover in the coaching staff.
It's been said before but it takes a great qb performance to beat a Saban coached team. It just happens to be that Clemson had a generational player in Watson and it sure looks like they have another in Lawrence. As long as they have that type of qb play they will be a problem. And I agree, we won't beat them with trickery, we'll have to outman them.
 

92tide

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Clemson did exactly what Bama has done for years - executed, limited mistakes, and capitalized when the opposing team made mistakes. They were the boa constrictor that Bama usually is. It was an impressive display of domination.
that game sort of reminded me of what we did to uga on our 2008 and 2015 trips to athens.
 

runtheoption22

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If you listen to his postgame interview after the game last night, It sounded like he was confused to what was going on with the offense.. and he felt like we got away from what was working for us in the game.

Also, he mentioned copycat stuff Clemson took from other's team and used it against them. (MSU, Georgia).... and they didn't practice against that. Sounds like lack of preparations all around.

Which is why I think we should pay Enos $1.5 -$2 mil a year to be OC and entice him to not leave for a while.
 

rtr90

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It's amazing how after a season of "wow, how incredible," it only takes 3 quarters to start reading, "this a team with many problems that were obvious."

Another entry in, "Newspaper guys making $13 an hour trying to get raises to $18 an hour."
selma it saddens me to say i disagree. Saban saw the leaking oil on the convertible long before the championship. It is appropriate to evaluate the staff.
 

81usaf92

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It's amazing how after a season of "wow, how incredible," it only takes 3 quarters to start reading, "this a team with many problems that were obvious."

Another entry in, "Newspaper guys making $13 an hour trying to get raises to $18 an hour."
I’ve never thought we were unbeatable, and I thought our defense was a little better than Texas all year. I said at the beginning that we were going to have to win the NC off offense. I also said Clemson was the best team we would’ve played all year to include UGA.

I think for the most part people refused to see the glaring issues with our defense, and started to buy fully into the idea that we were unstoppable on offense.

Next year we should be about the same on offense and better on defense. The added motivation might make this team hungrier to get back to NOLA for one last shot at Clemson. I think aTm is probably the only team on our schedule that sticks out but I think they maybe a year away. UGA is going to probably take a hit with the amount they are losing.
 

BamaMoon

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I will never watch the game again, but I put my thoughts on the reasons for the loss in Jess's post-game analysis thread. You lost because you got out coached. It was not poor execution of a good game plan - it was a poor game plan on Alabama's part combined with a perfect game plan by Dabo.

Saban sits in every meeting. He knew the game plans on offense and defense. He knew what you were going to do. Somehow no one on your staff was able to predict what Clemson would do. Your game plans assumed that they would just keep doing what they had been doing all season. When that proved to be incorrect, it took you too long to adjust.

Out prepared, out coached during the game. What will Saban do to ensure that this never happens again? I have no idea. Better analysts to self-scout? Better coordinators to turn analyst data into a game plan? Better coaches to implement the game plan? Better players at certain positions to perform on the field? A mixture of all of this?

I expect that Alabama will be in the hunt next year. You will play with a chip on your shoulder. You will get a little meaner. Heck, you might even act a little hungry for the first time in a while. But if you can't correct these problems, you will struggle with Dabo. He knows what you are doing, how you are doing it and why you are doing it that way.

Saban needs to adjust, and he will. I am interested to see how.
The only game I watched Clemson play all year was against ND. Compared to their game against us that I'd rate an "A+," it looks like they played a "C-" game against ND.

So my question is, if they did something different against us, what was it? OR, was it just a matter of they peaked and played their best game against us?

I thought we might see Hurts at qb for the second half. Might have been the spark we needed and a change-up to CU defence. JUst wondering how much consideration was given
He got one possession down by alot. It was unfair. Clemson just bled the clock alot after that. I will say that I was against putting Hurts in the game in the 3rd quartet. I wanted to see how halftime adjustments changed things. Right now I think there would not have been much difference between the 2 Qbs; it was the coaches, not the players. However, I wish we had put Hurts in earlier just to see. Hindsight is 20/20.
I don't think Hurts was the answer...we didn't really have trouble moving the ball as much as we had trouble getting into the endzone.

Actually, if the staff thought Jalen could make a difference they should have tried him much earlier. It seems to me that when we brought Jalen in it wasn't a "let's make a change" as much as it seemed we had accepted the game was over.
 

teamplayer

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I'm pretty sure that Coach Saban evaluates his staff every year. If he think changes need to be made, I'll bet they will be. I wonder how many times he has watched a replay of the game. I'd love to see his notes. I wonder if he actually writes down who or what he would blame for each breakdown. Oh, this was a coaching error. Dang, that was a player execution error. What the heck, the official blew that one. Man, that one is on me. That would be interesting.
 

81usaf92

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The only game I watched Clemson play all year was against ND. Compared to their game against us that I'd rate an "A+," it looks like they played a "C-" game against ND.

So my question is, if they did something different against us, what was it? OR, was it just a matter of they peaked and played their best game against us?





I don't think Hurts was the answer...we didn't really have trouble moving the ball as much as we had trouble getting into the endzone.

Actually, if the staff thought Jalen could make a difference they should have tried him much earlier. It seems to me that when we brought Jalen in it wasn't a "let's make a change" as much as it seemed we had accepted the game was over.
I think there is some truth that Clemson had scouted us for over a month knowing that ND didn’t have the speed to keep up with them. Alabama had to prepare for Oklahoma.

But I think Clemson was the best team this year. We could’ve played them 10 times and I think we probably beat them 4 times maybe 5. We weren’t stopping Lawrence with that defense our only hope was to outduel him.

But Alabama probably has the best team coming back with Clemson and UGA losing so much.
 

MattinBama

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selma it saddens me to say i disagree. Saban saw the leaking oil on the convertible long before the championship. It is appropriate to evaluate the staff.
I have no doubt that Saban saw some of it but many of us were glossing it over it.

The Tide's offense was so dominant for most of the season that a lot of warning signs were easily ignored by most people that weren't taking that close of a look. A lot of us knew they were there, but the rest of the CFB landscape seemed so far behind that it wouldn't matter.
 

TideEngineer08

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The only game I watched Clemson play all year was against ND. Compared to their game against us that I'd rate an "A+," it looks like they played a "C-" game against ND.

So my question is, if they did something different against us, what was it? OR, was it just a matter of they peaked and played their best game against us?





I don't think Hurts was the answer...we didn't really have trouble moving the ball as much as we had trouble getting into the endzone.

Actually, if the staff thought Jalen could make a difference they should have tried him much earlier. It seems to me that when we brought Jalen in it wasn't a "let's make a change" as much as it seemed we had accepted the game was over.
In 2009, we laid some stinkers throughout the season. Then, we looked like world beaters against Florida in the SEC title game. You know why that happened. And that's why things went the way they did in this game.
 

bamaslammer

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I'll preface this with: I don't think we can always make good judgements about staff without being on the inside. Several issues I see that were critical in order of importance.

#1 All the hand wringing over play calling is meaningless if you can't get 1 yard on the goal line. This is the foundation of all football and if you are 0% on that you're done. Nothing else matters. I feel certain we need a new coach there. A new attitude. If we can't do this everything else is moot. The Josh Jacobs 4th down conversions were all Josh Jacobs.

#2 simply ran out of guys who could rush the passer, You can't coach what isn't there. Which we tried to shore up with the blitz which leads me to

#3 our defensive backs were the worst as a group in the Saban era. I don't dislike them as players. I think some are going to be very good but they all collectively started their first season and collectedly got their butts handed to them. (including only games where the QB could actually throw). I feel next year will be a much better story but this year we probably overachieved to even get to the championship.

#4 Defensive Line: we barely had one. Williams was great, Buggs and Davis had moments here and there and I still like LaBryan Ray but we need 3 guys playing lights out and 3 guys playing very well behind them.

Overall this was the thinnest and worst defense we've seen under Saban. Injuries, NFL defections, and recruiting misses created this problem and only recruiting and a little more injury luck can get us out. They seem to have a good class coming in. We will just have to wait and see how far we can go in one off season.
 

The Ols

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FIFY...Hope that doesn't offend, but I don't think one more will be the end of this budding rivalry?
I’ve never thought we were unbeatable, and I thought our defense was a little better than Texas all year. I said at the beginning that we were going to have to win the NC off offense. I also said Clemson was the best team we would’ve played all year to include UGA.

I think for the most part people refused to see the glaring issues with our defense, and started to buy fully into the idea that we were unstoppable on offense.

Next year we should be about the same on offense and better on defense. The added motivation might make this team hungrier to get back to NOLA for one MORE shot at Clemson. I think aTm is probably the only team on our schedule that sticks out but I think they maybe a year away. UGA is going to probably take a hit with the amount they are losing.
 

BamaMoon

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I'll preface this with: I don't think we can always make good judgements about staff without being on the inside. Several issues I see that were critical in order of importance.

#1 All the hand wringing over play calling is meaningless if you can't get 1 yard on the goal line. This is the foundation of all football and if you are 0% on that you're done. Nothing else matters. I feel certain we need a new coach there. A new attitude. If we can't do this everything else is moot. The Josh Jacobs 4th down conversions were all Josh Jacobs.

.
Agree with your whole post...but you nail #1...how many points did we leave on the field because we couldn't score near the goal line? That, coupled with the two INTs, changed the whole complextion of the game from a score board perspective and last time I checked, that's the only stat that matters.
 

Padreruf

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on the radio they said that we have had 13 assistants leave and that the only assistants we have in main positions since the first Clemson game are Lupoi and Cochran.

over that same span, Clemson has lost 2.

there's no doubt that played a role, but there's no getting around that we were just taken to the woodshed last night...the coaches and the players.

they were better prepared, better motivated and made better adjustments.

i've never seen any of our teams under Saban ever look so overwhelmed as they did last night.

Clemson did to us what we normally do to our opponents...confuse us, beat us up, and make us quit.

it was just an all-around horrible performance on our side and an absolutely masterful performance by Clemson.

give them their do...they were far and away the best team in the country last night and it wasn't even close.

time to lick our wounds, regroup and see where we go from here.
Bobby Knight -- "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." When we realized that we had no answer for them...it's hard to keep playing when you are worn out.

I'm very interested in seeing what CNS does now...going to be insightful and will tell the tale of his legacy. Can he pick it all up and go forward and win another NC???
 

BamaMoon

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Someone mentioned Gene Chizik...I thought I heard he was going back in coaching somewhere else a couple of months ago???

I've really grown in my respect for him as an analyst. He seemed to speak of Bama fairly too, during this time.

And, he was a very good defensive coach...I just don't know if he and CNS are a good personality match?

But a bonus to having him is it would cheeze off the Barners! :biggrin:
 

CrimsonEyeshade

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Debbie Downer here, 81usaf92
Why do you think we'll be better on defense? It's possible that six of our front 7 might be gone. Admittedly there is talent in the wings. But since we've never seen it, it seems like a big leap of faith, even given our players and coaches.

Next year we should be about the same on offense and better on defense. The added motivation might make this team hungrier to get back to NOLA for one last shot at Clemson. I think aTm is probably the only team on our schedule that sticks out but I think they maybe a year away. UGA is going to probably take a hit with the amount they are losing.[/QUOTE]
 
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davefrat

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i wasn't about to say it on the predictions thread and get run out of town as an "Eeyore" but i thought we were going to lose, but not like that.

i expected a close, heart-breaker like 2016...not getting beat like a rented mule.

monday night was an unthinkable disaster all the way around.

Clemson has earned the right to chest thump and claim to be the baddest bully around.

it's up to us to try and take that mantle back...and the window is probably closing fairly fast.
 

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