I thought Daboll had far more good game plans this year than bad ones. By "far more" i don't just mean a majority. I mean most. There were a lot of times Alabama simply didn't execute.
We get trapped sometimes in a line of thinking that is pretty much a fantasy: If we succeed, the players did it; if we fail, it's because the coaches didn't do their jobs. Coach Bryant publicly preached that, but ask a former player how much they hated hearing Bryant shoulder a loss in the press, because when everyone got behind a closed practice fence later, that's when you found out whether it was really a coaching or an execution breakdown that caused the loss.
Alabama's game plan for Clemson, for instance, was one of the best of the year. Hurts completed two-thirds of his passes and had two other passes dropped. Yet the depth of analysis most people do are (1) go find the stat sheet, (2) look at the passing yard number, (3) make a judgment call based on what it says. Sometimes they'll look at the rushing yardage total just for kicks, too. Game plans are designed to win games, not put up numbers, so it's hard for me to complain about a low-output result like Clemson when it in fact did exactly what it was meant to accomplish (control field position, not commit turnovers, put Kelly Bryant in uncomfortable spots).
Georgia as a team had more impressive offensive weapons than Clemson, and you just got the feeling from about the midway point of the second quarter that a game-management effort wasn't going to be enough. So Alabama had to come up with Plan B on the fly. The fact Saban and Daboll essentially junked a month's worth of gameplanning and wrote a new plan in 30 minutes is pretty sporty.
If you want to criticize Daboll for Hurts' stalled development, that would be more fair. But I'd have to know whether Hurts has the capability to get better, or whether he's tapped out his talent. He's improved in some areas this year (fewer mistakes) but has been less dynamic. Most shockingly to me, he's been less aggressive as a runner. I think it's entirely possible that Lane Kiffin is a better QB coach but maybe Daboll is a better fit for running this offense. I liked the recommitment this year to a more vertical offense, a more downhill style of running, and I believe that you can create the identity you want if you don't try to do it too drastically, and if you're consistent about how you do it. I don't like finesse football in SEC play; it doesn't work here over the long-term.
Assuming Tua wins the starting job for 2018, we'll learn all we need to know about Daboll in short order, because Tua gives the offense the vertical component that would seem to fit his style better.