Link: Interesting CFBCG take from Josh Jacobs

CajunCrimson

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Conversely, the games are generally shorter than college in terms of time and snaps and they almost certainly have less practice contact than college teams too. The roster is tighter than college, so starters usually play the whole game though. I think the NFL does a pretty good job of keeping their players fresh. Especially the good franchises.
Plus they aren't taking a Cultural Anthropology Final or writing a term paper on English Lit the week before.....
 

TideEngineer08

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My apologies, I wasn't referring to the board discussion but players and others who may represent the university in some capacity (players parents, players, coaches etc.) publicly making statements that though are possibly legitimate reasons, come across more as whining than anything.

Regarding your second paragraph, though I agree with everything your're saying. It's the nature of the beast with college athletics and nothing realistically can be done to change it. You're dealing with majority amateur talent (with some professional talent mixed in) that is not evenly dispersed across the country. As much as I agree with Clemson having a cheesy easy path to the CFP. What do we expect to be done to "correct" it? Not let them in the CFP, force them to change conferences, mandate them to play all SEC teams as their OOC games? Unfortunately, most of the elite talent resides in the SEC. We beat our chest, brag about it, rub it in other conferences' faces. Then try to use it as an excuse when we lose. There could be an argument made that if our teams play in the toughest conference, against the best talent in the country, then we should be more than prepared to play teams from other conferences.

I do agree it would benefit us to have an additional week between semi final games and NC games. But, concerning this year's title game. I think being out coached and out prepared had more to do with the loss than being tired.
No need for apologies.

I'm not looking to really change anything much because, there really isn't anything you can do about it. Yes, I do brag about the level of competition in the SEC. It is leaps and bounds above the rest of college football. But, it has its drawbacks and we are seeing it in the playoff era. In the BCS era, our champion would emerge far more battle tested and it showed after a month layoff allowing everyone to heal up. Now, with the playoff, we lose that layoff for the title game. And a team like Clemson, with SEC level talent, can coast through their regular season, get a really nice warm up in the semi, and still have their legs under them a week later.

As for any kind of "fix", I think those of you who have lamented Coach Saban's lack of player rotation during the season have it exactly right. He's got to play more guys, especially during blowouts. We had way too thin of a rotation this season and it definitely showed towards the end.
 

MOAN

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It seemed obvious to me that Clemson's whole season was in preparation for Bama in the playoffs and it showed! Oh I am sure they spent time on their weekly appoinents but their focus was on revenging the loss to Bama in the semi the season before. Once they settled on their qb, the rest of the season, which nearly got derailed against Syracuse when Lawrence went down with a concussion, was all about Bama!!

At least that is my story and I am sticking to it lol!! It still took a perfect game to beat Bama and a lot of help from Bama as well! 2 int's and 3 turnovers on downs deep in enemy territory will get you beat even against Ole Miss!! Clemson is on Bama's level, not an Ole Miss!!! We will get'em this year!! ;)
 

TiderJack

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No need for apologies.

I'm not looking to really change anything much because, there really isn't anything you can do about it. Yes, I do brag about the level of competition in the SEC. It is leaps and bounds above the rest of college football. But, it has its drawbacks and we are seeing it in the playoff era. In the BCS era, our champion would emerge far more battle tested and it showed after a month layoff allowing everyone to heal up. Now, with the playoff, we lose that layoff for the title game. And a team like Clemson, with SEC level talent, can coast through their regular season, get a really nice warm up in the semi, and still have their legs under them a week later.

As for any kind of "fix", I think those of you who have lamented Coach Saban's lack of player rotation during the season have it exactly right. He's got to play more guys, especially during blowouts. We had way too thin of a rotation this season and it definitely showed towards the end.
Good post. I agree about playing more guys. Saban, being a defensive coach, realized our defense was not up to our typical standard especially depth wise and kept our starters in late in games so our defensive stats would not suffer as much IMO. That paid a toll as the season wore on.
 

CHATTBRIT

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For whatever reason, when Bama is ranked #1 in the playoffs, they don't win the NC. Guys, the good news is that Bama will not be ranked #1 at the beginning of the 2019 season and also, hopefully, at the end. #2 or #3 is just fine for the playoffs.
 

CrimsonForce

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For whatever reason, when Bama is ranked #1 in the playoffs, they don't win the NC. Guys, the good news is that Bama will not be ranked #1 at the beginning of the 2019 season and also, hopefully, at the end. #2 or #3 is just fine for the playoffs.
The #1 team has not won the NC in the CFP era..
 

JDCrimson

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Let me preface this by saying that I have a lot of respect for Jalen and the character and leadership he brought to our program. But I think as more time passes, we will look back on the 2016-2018 era of the CNS tenure as an experimental stage where we moved to less physical style of play among other issues on both sides of the ball and ironically suffered more injuries during this time, had less ball control, struggled to convert on 3rd down, etc. Minus Clemson or OSU no other team is even sniffing playing for a NC this way and those teams have tremendous schedule help through the season. We lost 2 NCs during this time and won 1. But somehow I just think coach was not comfortable with the philosophy during these 3yrs.

I think we are seeing coach shift back some to a style of play he is more comfortable with. Truth be told I think coach would say he prefers the makeup/style of his 2015 team than any other. It could play physical but stretch the field on offense and we had a platoon of bigger defensive players.

We need to move back to the bigger players in the front 7 on D with a deeper rotation to weather the grind of our schedule and make the other team play a more physical game that they are likely not used to in the NC.

What we witnessed in the NCG was the diminishing returns of a strategy that will not put us in firm position in title games. Looks we are moving back.




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BamaBuc

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There is, without question, validity to the argument that Clemson was more "fresh" during the CFPCG. And for any athlete, being at exactly he right "freshness" is essential to peak performance. So, when two fairly equal teams play and one has a significant edge in "freshness", it could absolutely prove to be the difference in the game. As a distance runner for decades, this is absolute fact backed by some serious science.

All that said, there is nothing that fans can do about it. I certainly would not use it as an excuse for the loss when talking to Clemson fans. It sounds weak. But if I was Saban, I would consider what he can do given the schedule disparity to help Alabama remain more fresh down the stretch this year.

Last year the loss to Auburn helped you. You were very fresh when you played Clemson.

This season there is a huge gap between CFP games (between round one and round two). That should help.
Although one thing that might help this year in the overall scheme of things are the two open dates!

The first between the Ole Miss and Texas a&m game, and the 2nd as usual before the LSU game after the Arkansas (Homecoming)!

Of course then before we go to the barnyard we have a little birthday party for the Catamount's!
 

PA Tide Fan

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I'm beginning to wonder if it's better for Bama to already have a loss going into the playoff. Coach Saban frequently says himself that he's had only had one undefeated championship team at Bama. Why is that? Seems to me that a possible reason is that with a loss the guys are more focused and realize that they will get beat if they don't play their best while an undefeated playoff team may think they can beat anybody, perhaps even if they don't play their best. Maybe the fact that we beat Clemson easily a year ago had some of our guys thinking it wasn't going to be hard this time either.
 

daddybama1

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Admittedly, Clemson looked like the team with more juice out there. I think there is some truth to Jacobs' analysis but the blame is still in our court. My argument since that whooping is that we've got to start playing more guys because than Saban's traditional approach dictates. He wants to play guys he "trusts" but that day and age is over. When you play 14 or 15 games in a season and our back half of the schedule is almost nothing but top 25 teams...you've got to build depth and sometimes that means playing guys before you can trust them and hope that they become trustable. Injuries exacerbated this issue for Alabama this year but even with 3 more OLBs and a 1 DB we were still very thin rotationally - despite having bodies - on the DL which is why our best player was worn out since that LSU game.
Excellent point! I read somewhere that Clemson averaged playing 70 players a game and we averaged about 45...that in itself keeps guys fresh. With all of our blow out wins (just like Clemson had) we could have easily played a lot more players...less reps over the long haul by our starters and building depth too. The mentally fatigue excuse sort of rubbed me the wrong way. It did not bother us in the two NC games we won in CFP era and did not bother us in the loss to Clemson in the 2nd NC game...what got us that game was they ran 99 plays on offense and that is what made us tired...but it was still so winnable (lost by 4). So we get our butt kicked on the scoreboard but we had 5 trips on in the redzone...how do you do this against a great Defense if you are mentally fatigued? We had two picks which resulted in 14 points for CU...is this because of mental fatigue? We had a turrible (charles barkly voice) fake field goal...mental fatigue? We were turrible on 3rd downs...is this mental fatigue? i don't buy it...Clemson did not make those mistakes in the game. Clemson was the better team this year. It sucks but reality matters if we are to turn it around. The season is loooooog for both teams. Come on man!
 

EnterBama

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I can buy the mental and physical fatigue angle. Georgia fans talk about how young they are as reason for not beating us but we're just as young. It's rare for us to have anywhere near the number of senior starting players that Clemson had. Losing them may hurt them some next year but we're losing too many players to the draft too early every year. That has to effect leadership as much as anything.

A good 22 year old player will usually beat or outlast a good 19 year old player.
 

TigerTown

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You guys were favored by at least 2 TD in every game (avg of like 4 TD) and avg winning margin was 30 or so. No doubt the sec championship was tougher than the acc, can not argue that.

That's 1 game they were mentally taxed. Now, if the saban model of how he approaches all games, practices, and "the process" was mentally taxing... I guess, but it's worked really well the past decade.
 

B1GTide

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You guys were favored by at least 2 TD in every game (avg of like 4 TD) and avg winning margin was 30 or so.
That did not make those teams any easier to beat. If anything, it made them harder to beat. You might understand the conversation if you had to fight through a similar November/December schedule every single year.
 

TigerTown

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If you all wouldn't have been beaten down so bad you took a knee to end the 1st half and the game was even in question at some point in the 2nd half... the idea that you were "mentally" drained would maybe have merit. So you were mentally exhausted by maybe playing tough games each week 2 to 3 months earlier?

Right...
 
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