The play calling is fine if we block better and don't drop passes. In this game, it was the execution IMO.
Daboll is.... okay, but he is very predictable at times.
I have been consistent with insisting Daboll is not a proven commodity at OC. He was an emergency hire, he'd been out of work for years as an OC. Does that mean he's bad or incompetent? No, it doesn't. But he also hasn't had success as an OC and was out of work as an OC for the past few years. So, I went into this with some trepidation. The thing that stands out to me is predictability. I read what Daboll was going to do before he got to Alabama, and he's pretty much done that. So, the question that begs is if he's taken full advantage of what he has available since he is being relatively predictable. The counter of course would be that overall he's performing and that even mediocre at the NFL level is excellent at the college level.
My concern is that Daboll had bludgeoned lesser teams with Alabama's superior physicality. That's great when you are bigger/stronger/faster. He's leaned on the run and just demolished lesser teams with great results. But, against LSU or FSU for example, two physically talented teams, his offense failed to dominate in the same way (remember Alabama put up the least yards against FSU of any opponent). Alabama had 19 more yards than FSU did and 7 less yards than LSU did. This is disconcerting,
Syracuse had more yards against LSU and FSU than Alabama did. Florida's non-existent offense put up more yards against LSU. So, the big concern is that Daboll's Alabama offense is basically fool's gold. It looks shiny enough, but as of right now that's mainly because he ran the ball a lot against teams that had no shot of stopping the run.
So you see I'm not exaggerating, Alabama has 413 rushes for 2,506 yards. Alabama only has 217 pass attempts for 1,791 yards. That's not even closed to being balanced. For the sake of comparison, last year Alabama ran 650 times for 3,704 yards. They passed 416 times for 3125 yards. The good is that they are rushing the ball a bit better, the bad is that while Hurts has obviously improved as a passer, he's passing less and the disparity between run/pass has grown instead of shrunk. Now, that doesn't mean Daboll is without a master plan. That doesn't mean something is wrong, but it is disconcerting.
What I hoped to see this year was a commitment to developing Hurts as a passer. This meant in the games where Alabama obviously was in control, Hurts would be forced to throw the ball more. This has not been the case a lot of the time. Against Fresno State he passed 18 times and ran 10 times. Against Ole Miss he passed 19 times and ran 10 times. The same for Arkansas. That's a common ratio for him, but it's alarming that he didn't seem to run less or throw more, even in blowouts. I'm not bashing Daboll for getting away from doing a lot of behind the line of scrimmage stuff, but it seems that some short passes that would develop Hurts and the receivers, have gone away in favor of sure thing runs which in some cases is just suffocating an already dead opponent. This leads me to be concerned that Alabama has underdeveloped some aspects of their passing game, in particular parts of it that might be good counters to what the defense is doing.
Having said all that, I still think the jury is out on Daboll. If the biggest knock is he runs too much and Alabama's yardage is unimpressive against physical defenses, things might be fine. After all his job is to put the team in position to win, not look pretty doing it.
