The Offense, specifically playcalling

BamaInBham said:

I rarely offer criticism of CNS/staff for various reasons, the only exception to date has been regarding personnel. IMO, there are those who should see more playing time: Ray, Moses, Williams on D and Damien on O, maybe Wills for Womack. I do think JJ is closer to DH than you say. Also, to be fair to the staff, last year DH did wear out toward the end of the year. Some of it was nagging injuries, some may have been fatigue. In the end I realize there are likely factors of which I'm unaware, but looking on the surface, I agree wholeheartedly with your thoughts about DH.

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I haven't mentioned Josh specifically but I agree he is also really good. If you count his receiving yards he has the highest YPT (Yards per Touch) of the RB's at 8.7 and he averages 7.0 YPC on pure rushes.

If Damien had to miss some extended time I'd be looking between Josh and Najee to take his snaps with the edge going to Josh on production and experience.

I'm not trying to disparage #9 at all either. He is very valuable and I understand he's not even close to 100%. He's a warrior....I love the guy. But for right now jmho he should be in a limited specialist role. His mobility is limited to North/South running right now.

In space he can for sure get some yards with a head of steam on swing passes etc and he's GREAT for short 3rd-4th down and Goal-line situations and/or giving Damien a breather. If the OL gives him an actual hole it's going to be a big gain no doubt.

But our OL is not doing very well at opening holes for North/South running right now. I think Damien is the best RB overall no matter the blocking but he's especially the best at Cut-Backs.....by a wide margin....and that's what we need until future OL improvement/consistency is established.

I can't think of a single play this season where i would have called something different than what was called. I can't remember that happening before. So I'm pretty satisfied with what we are doing from a game plan and situational standpoint.

There are alot of players on offense who deserve touches. Honestly, if I had one quibble, I think Jacobs could have shredded LSU in a screen offense the other night. He got one carry.

CBD is likely doing what coach wants. We haven't had to make in game adjustments because we have bludgeoned the other team to death with a straightforward attack. I think the mix has been right run pass on offense this year to cover for the defense and it hasn't looked like it to date but we will need to be able to run the ball to help this defense out with first sign of it against LSU.

Last year we relied too much on Jalen's running ability because he couldn't execute all the necessary throws and as the season went along we relied more and more on our defense. We came up 1 play short and rode our defense off the cliff because we couldn't sustain drives on offense at least enough to flip field position. This year we are passing less to work on ball control to protect the defense. And I still don't believe that Jalen can pass us to a lead from behind. I think coaches know what they have in Jalen and they are playing to his strengths.

Also, our approach to playing LSU is different than any other team we play. We seem to be content to fight it out in phone booth with them. I think that coach really respects their secondary's playmaking ability to change a game with an interception. To a lesser degree, I think coach sees LSU having comparable talent but not as fundamentally sound and not as deep as us. So we play conservative and don't do the things that get you beat strategy which is exactly what we did the other night even though we didn't control the major statistics.

But give Devin White credit for following through on his pregame promise - they didn't get the win but they did beat us up.

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Najee is not physical enough to play in the upcoming games, imo. He has not lived up to my expectations in that regard. Now, Robinson on the other hand could be an asset if we need another physical back.

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JDCrimson said:

Najee is not physical enough to play in the upcoming games, imo. He has not lived up to my expectations in that regard. Now, Robinson on the other hand could be an asset if we need another physical back.

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I'm surprised you say Najee is not physical enough. IMO, that is one of his primary strengths. He is a great athlete with surprising size, but not quick or fast. But he seems very physical. Can't tell about his vision or ability to use it.

Burton Burns has done amazing things with several RBs: especially Coffee, Ingram and D. Harris. Damien made tremendous strides from year one to two. I thought he looked great in HS, but his Fr year at Bama he was very disappointing to me. But he looked like a different back his Soph year.

TIDE-HSV said:

I commented to a friend that Daboll was play-calling with shackles on. I hear all the sentiment for running the ball, but that's hard to do against 6-8 talented players in the box. Now that our opponents have seen that LSU stayed with us stat-wise and beat the line. Just as at the end of last season we will have to prove we can beat teams with Hurts' arm. I, for one, feel better about that than I did last year. It appeared to me that LSU was determined to rely on its talented secondary, man to man, and keep the rushers coming, even if it cost them the game, which it did. Erase a couple of drops and give us back a robbed TD, and they lose by even more. Nevertheless, I think I see the shadow of the rest of the season...

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I agree it's hard to run against the stacked fronts but it just seemed like we knew their offense couldnt drive the field on us consistently so we were content to play conservative and physical. It does seem we are doing a better job this year of designing game plans to dismantle the team in front of us a bit but not necessarily using situations in current games to setup future strategies in future games. For the better part of last season I felt like Kiffin just pulled last week's playsheet out the top left hand drawer and just went with regardless who the opponent was.

I get the feeling we are more versatile with our attacks week to week with CBD like he actually did his homework than I ever felt with CLK. And I still feel like he can call the game at a much higher level but Jalen is improving but still not as efficient as needs to be to allow it.

I just think we played too many plays on defense when it wasn't necessary if we had kept our foot on the gas and it looked like we didn't benefit from the rest of the off week, our energy seemed off a bit. It was incredibly humid for a November game.

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davefrat said:

seems like we've become so accustomed to manhandling opponents that we as fans overreact to tighter, tougher contests.
we have three more games against teams that can push us, and 2 against teams that could very well beat us.
we're a really, really good team, but we aren't going to totally dominate high quality opponents.
when we play Auburn (and possibly GA and possibly make it to the playoffs) we'll be playing teams we should simply be happy to beat by any margin.

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We beat LSU by 14 points. We only gave up 10 points. I will take that any game. We are not going to blow out everybody and all that matters in games is outscoring other team. ROLL TIDE!!!

TIDE-HSV said:

I commented to a friend that Daboll was play-calling with shackles on. I hear all the sentiment for running the ball, but that's hard to do against 6-8 talented players in the box. Now that our opponents have seen that LSU stayed with us stat-wise and beat the line. Just as at the end of last season we will have to prove we can beat teams with Hurts' arm. I, for one, feel better about that than I did last year. It appeared to me that LSU was determined to rely on its talented secondary, man to man, and keep the rushers coming, even if it cost them the game, which it did. Erase a couple of drops and give us back a robbed TD, and they lose by even more. Nevertheless, I think I see the shadow of the rest of the season...

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If that PI doesn't happen on Smith and he catches that TD Jalen would have been the first QB to throw for 200 yards 2 TDs and 0 INTs against LSU this season. I'm pretty sure only Trevor Knight did it to them last season.

I watched the game again last night and came from the game with a little different view.
Saturday nite I thought Hurts did a good job but after last nite I believe he done a excellent job. So many drop passes this game would have been totally different if
most were caught