Arkansas State Fan Here to chat with The Tide Faithful
- Thread starter Bojo1324
- Start date
Greetings Tidefans. I'm the former publisher of the AState site (26 years it was time for a break).
There used to be a number of AState/Bama connections.
Former head coach Larry Lacewell worked under Bear Bryant early in his career, Bryant was best friends growing up with Lacewell's father.
Lacewell was replaced by former Alabama player Al Kincaid and was hired by AState AD Charlie Thornton who was Bryant's right hand administrator and was an AState alum.
When Kincaid was fired after two years for poor teams and a DWI the replacement was Ray Perkins.
Perkins ran off a big portion of the team and we stunk but his one recruiting class was the core of the first winning team after returing to I-A/FBS. He also angered many fans by having a privacy fence built around the practice field and closing most practices. Fans dubbed it Fort Perkins and it was torn down about as quickly as he left.
Perkins quit to become OC for the Pats 8 days before signing day so there aren't many positive thoughts of Perkins around the AState family.
Perkins was replaced by John Bobo who had been a GA at Bama under Perkins and followed him to the Bucs.
After Kincaid, Perkins and Bobo there was a lot distaste for hiring anyone with Bama ties.
I won't be making the trip but I was there for the 1982 game and our highlight was being the first team to block an Alabama punt for a TD in like 12 years.
AState fans in general view the P5 world as being two groups. The true elites who just rarely lose except to ranked teams and even then perform well vs ranked teams and then the rabble who aren't dramatically different from the top teams in the Sun Belt, MAC, AAC, and MWC except that they get a piece of the TV money the elites bring in to the conference and they get the benefit of playing attractive home schedules by virtue of their conference membership.
If an Alabama or Ohio State were to move in a kid we are recruiting, we chalk it up to doing a good job evaluating talent. If someone toe jam program like Purdue sweeps in and snags a commit late, then we get ....ed because the kid is just going name brand and they are a name brand because of who hangs out with them, not what they are achieving.
We typically compete well with the rabble even when we weren't very good. The elites are a different matter.
There used to be a number of AState/Bama connections.
Former head coach Larry Lacewell worked under Bear Bryant early in his career, Bryant was best friends growing up with Lacewell's father.
Lacewell was replaced by former Alabama player Al Kincaid and was hired by AState AD Charlie Thornton who was Bryant's right hand administrator and was an AState alum.
When Kincaid was fired after two years for poor teams and a DWI the replacement was Ray Perkins.
Perkins ran off a big portion of the team and we stunk but his one recruiting class was the core of the first winning team after returing to I-A/FBS. He also angered many fans by having a privacy fence built around the practice field and closing most practices. Fans dubbed it Fort Perkins and it was torn down about as quickly as he left.
Perkins quit to become OC for the Pats 8 days before signing day so there aren't many positive thoughts of Perkins around the AState family.
Perkins was replaced by John Bobo who had been a GA at Bama under Perkins and followed him to the Bucs.
After Kincaid, Perkins and Bobo there was a lot distaste for hiring anyone with Bama ties.
I won't be making the trip but I was there for the 1982 game and our highlight was being the first team to block an Alabama punt for a TD in like 12 years.
AState fans in general view the P5 world as being two groups. The true elites who just rarely lose except to ranked teams and even then perform well vs ranked teams and then the rabble who aren't dramatically different from the top teams in the Sun Belt, MAC, AAC, and MWC except that they get a piece of the TV money the elites bring in to the conference and they get the benefit of playing attractive home schedules by virtue of their conference membership.
If an Alabama or Ohio State were to move in a kid we are recruiting, we chalk it up to doing a good job evaluating talent. If someone toe jam program like Purdue sweeps in and snags a commit late, then we get ....ed because the kid is just going name brand and they are a name brand because of who hangs out with them, not what they are achieving.
We typically compete well with the rabble even when we weren't very good. The elites are a different matter.
Just want to second Bojo's comment on this board. The best P5 board I've seen.
Question for Bama fans: How confident are you in your secondary after the Louisville win? It is the supposed "weakness" of your defense, correct? This is the most interesting matchup for me in this game. Most would describe our receiving corp as one of the best in the G5.
One note on our QB Hansen, he is a very even keel dude. His mannerisms are exactly the same after throwing a TD or interception. He's the type that could throw for 6 TDs and 6 Interceptions in the same game. lol
Question for Bama fans: How confident are you in your secondary after the Louisville win? It is the supposed "weakness" of your defense, correct? This is the most interesting matchup for me in this game. Most would describe our receiving corp as one of the best in the G5.
One note on our QB Hansen, he is a very even keel dude. His mannerisms are exactly the same after throwing a TD or interception. He's the type that could throw for 6 TDs and 6 Interceptions in the same game. lol
I think it's too early to know how good Bama's secondary is going to be. Little question there was some confusion in coverage - hence some wide open receivers - but for most of the secondary this was their first start. I expect they'll improve dramatically as the season progresses as I don't think we've ever had this level of athleticism in the secondary. Just going to have to wait and see.
This weekend will be a good test, but if your OL isn't up to the challenge I'm not sure the passing plays will have long enough to develop for us to measure how much they've improved over week one (or not).
That said, I expect the secondary to give up yards over the next two weeks even as they improve - both you guys and OM are excellent passing teams. It doesn't worry me as Bama's run D looks to be as unyielding as ever, and no one-dimensional team ever beats Bama. But I still expect some whining from the unrealistic fans who expect the defense to hold every team <100 yards of total offense.
Again, welcome to all you Red Wolves, and RTR.
The Tuscaloosa News does a Bama podcast, and they discussed the rising salaries of assistants in an episode within the last year or so. As the discussion went on, one of the reporters mentioned how Group of 5 and FCS schools are gradually leaving the natural progression in the coaching ladder. If a coordinator makes over a million, why would he take less to be a G5 or FCS head coach when he can wait another year or two for a P5 job to become available?
In return, this prevents programs from getting a good hire to rebuild the program. Add this to what you mention, I realize we take for granted what we have as P5 programs when talking about lower level programs.
I don't mean this to sound condescending or haughty, but I genuinely think "weakness" is a relative term. It implies a static level of performance. This secondary, while young, has IMMENSE potential and has a coaching staff that can maximize that potential.
In my opinion, our secondary over-performed to expectations in the L-ville game. I basically disregard 4th quarter passing stats from L-ville as they had in their 1s and we had in our 3s and 4s. Through the first half and nearly all the 3rd the Cardinals couldn't capitalize on some breakdowns in coverage by our ILB's. The corners and star's did a great job to say nothing of Deointe Thompson absolutely terrorizing them and taking the deep ball away. And there was basically nothing on the outside of the hashes. As many have said, while the experience is lower, the current secondary has better athletic tangibles than the guys (Minkah Fitzpatrick excluded) who departed last year. Diggs, Surtain, and Savion Smith are overall athletic upgrades over Wallace and Averett; and judging from the first games performance they aren't dreadfully behind in their technical ability.
As crimsonaudio pointed out, as good as your receivers and QB are (and Jawon Pass and his receiving crops were no slouches) I think it's going to be tough sledding for those guys if A: the O-line can't get a running game going, allowing us to keep 2-deep and drop ILB's into coverage. B: They can't stop QB pressure from a 4 man front on pressure packages.
That will really be the decider.
I think your best chances are to do damage through the air early. I say this because Bama's typical early game strategy is to have the D-line 2 gap and hold at the LOS to shut down the run game. Bama ILB's play up a little bit in support. Typically opposing QB's have a tad more time in the pocket because they aren't receiving as much pressure, and this time creates opportunity. Against a younger secondary, this will be crucial. Later in the game, once the running game has been abandoned and the opposing offense is forced to throw because time is against them and they are operating at a point deficit is really when things tend to get ugly with pass pressure being increased and blitzes coming more regularly. If there is a talent differential between the opposing O-line and our D-line, this is when the game is effectively over.
If moves are going to be made against our young secondary I expect it to happen within the first 4 drives. In this game, if you get past 4 drives and have no points to show for it - it's an unfortunate reality that the receivers and QB probably won't get anything done until late in the 4th quarter.
I think it could be an interesting game if your offense gets off to a good start and capitalizes early on any opportunities yielded.
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It is a good point but remember about 60% of being a successful assistant is being able to hitch your wagon to a guy going up the ladder. Our former OC Walt Bell left for Maryland and then Florida State and when it came out that Taggart would be the one calling plays at Florida State that was very odd, Walt had called the plays at AState and at Maryland, dudes don't give up responsibility easily. Well the past month or so we've seen why Bell wanted out of Maryland bad enough to not be the play caller.
Gus turned down Vandy. A year later took AState for less money. The Chizik ship was obviously sinking Ted Roof bailed at the same time to go to UCF and never coached there going on to Penn State. Bryan Harsin was OC at Texas and took the head coach job at AState a year before Mack Brown retired. Blake Anderson was OC at Southern Miss and wasn't offered the gig when Fedora left because the AD wanted to go in a completely different direction (0-12 for his trouble). Anderson then left for AState to become head coach because he wasn't a "hot" property.
So you will see some go because they for whatever reason want out of a situation they think is deteriorating or because they've not caught on as a hot property.
But the days of leaving to get a raise as a G5 head coach or even the same money plus more years guaranteed is fading.
Not that I expect AState to be able to do much of anything about it, but rewatching the Bama-Louisville game, one of two things happened. Either Petrino came in with a terrible game plan or he lost his composure.
Run game wasn't working (no surprise). They were able to get the 3-4 yard short passes and if they had stuck with it might have moved the sticks more often. Actually got a few passes turned into nice plays because of yards after the catch. There was no real attempt by Louisville to play a short possession game, they were bombing deep and Alabama front pressure resulted in having to throw it away, passes thrown before the receiver was where he was supposed to be and they were holding people back for more protection so nearly every deep ball there was corner tracking the receiver and a safety over to help.
Thought it was a dumb plan and if that wasn't the plan, then Neckbrace Bobby panicked trailing early.
Welcome to all the Ark St posters. It is a pleasure to hear from knowledgeable fans from other teams that are respectful in our Tidefans house. I like hearing about the challenges that your program faces and it's good to know that we can help by adding you to our schedule. We have had many discussions here about who we play in non conference, but I believe that these games allow us to help give more young men the opportunity to acquire a degree by playing the game we love.
Looking forward to a good game Saturday.
Looking forward to a good game Saturday.
Agreed. This MSU game last year illustrated the damage that could be done dinking and dunking underneath and mixing in QB runs and RPO's. The longer developing plays down the field didn't work consistently for L-ville.
To be fair, going underneath usually doesn't work for an entire game either as at some point everyone will play up, jam the receivers at the line and rush the QB. You have to have a suitable QB for the system that MSU ran last year.
We took that approach against Nebraska last year. Hansen was 46 of 68 for 415 yards. Nebraska finally had to step up to pressure those plays and we started hitting intermediate throws that opened up. Missed our chance to win overthrowing Edwards twice late.
Now Bama is no Alabama but Louisville is not AState either.
The other problem with this strategy is that you need to be really disciplined and execute on every down because as soon as you slip up and get behind the chains our defense is coming for you. And, for many teams in college that is REALLY hard to do consistently especially against a team that as more talent than you and is better coached than you like Alabama. It can work but its definitely not easy.
It's much easier to have your QB chuck the ball in the air and hope your tall WRs make some ridiculous grabs. (to be clear this should have been blue)
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Another interesting fact is that the turnaround for the program at AState coincided with an emphasis on recruiting Alabama.
Since 2008 (First year as the Red Wolves and last time playing Alabama), Arkansas State has had 41 young men from Alabama on the roster. Some didn't last long, but the effort to recruit a place that takes less time to get to than the other side of the State of Arkansas has paid dividends with 8 of them playing beyond their last year of college (3 NFL guys came directly from Alabama, while Dee Liner is on the Chiefs practice squad).
Since 2008 (First year as the Red Wolves and last time playing Alabama), Arkansas State has had 41 young men from Alabama on the roster. Some didn't last long, but the effort to recruit a place that takes less time to get to than the other side of the State of Arkansas has paid dividends with 8 of them playing beyond their last year of college (3 NFL guys came directly from Alabama, while Dee Liner is on the Chiefs practice squad).
Liner was on the Bama roster for 1-2 years. Good player that got into a little trouble IIRC. Recruting Alabama is a good idea for your program. Onto the game, I think your QB will give us some problems but obviously y'all are not going to be able to stop our offense. Should be a great experience for your players.
I was at the 2008 game in Bryant Denny sitting in the Arkansas State ticket area (a lot of games I go to we get tickets from the opposing team's unused allotment to save some money) and all the fans there were nice folks. Have paid more attention to Arkansas State when they play because of that. Hoping for a decent game with no injuries and hoping your receivers help our secondary grow some before we get into SEC play and hope you win out the rest of the way.
Thank you for the reply. Didnt come off as arrogant at all. It is what it is.
Ill tell you right now, "A" is going to happen. We couldnt establish a running game in any game last year. This year after playing a FCS, nothing has changed.
Discipline while executing is usually not a problem for our team. It's the after the play shenannigans that get us in trouble. And all this talk of dinking and dunking, while it worked for Nebraska, probably won't work with Alabama. The main reason is that our offensive line is not going to keep your defensive line out of the backfield for long. So if we start dinking and dunking, you'll start jamming receivers and then your line is going to start sacking our QB because he won't have time to throw the middle or deep routes. I fully expect our QB to be running for his life most of the game.
I truly hope we can make a decent game of it and agree our only hope is our passing game from what I've seen. But I also realize there is a huge talent disparity. You can't coach someone to be more of athlete than they are.
Might as well just come out of the gate slinging it. Take shots. Nothing to lose and trying to throw haymakers from the start could be disorienting enough to make it interesting. You've got a good QB and receivers who can cause problems so just play your hand from the start would by tactic if I was the head coach. I still maintain those first 4-5 drives are crucial Don't let Bama get the measure of you or it's over.
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