Some late-night post-mortems...

[Ldlane]

We got beat straight up last night. It was not due to the HUNH. OSU used very little hurry up in the game. We uncharacteristically missed a ton of tackles, and we could couldn't get Cardale Jones on the ground. He is a big strong dude!




I'm sorry, but I think that's our problem now. Cy Jones, Eddie Jackson, and Bradley Sylve were listed as ATH's coming out of HS and Jones and Sylve were WR's early on. We don't currently a true a CB starting on the field. Brown and Humphrey are as well as Minkah Fitzpatrick that is coming in this year. Hopefully they will develop to reflect their 5 star rankings at the position.

Agree on the HUNH, but in general how we send in "Package D" for situations. Especially early in games in which we have a week or two "layoff" fresh packages have to "Catch up with the speed of the game" and we give up big time yardage and scores.

Not sure CNS agrees on the CB situation from what I've read about his philosophy. But, we do need to look for those players.

 

[HendersonKYTide]

Well now that I have slept on it or i guess tossed and turned about it while debating turning on the tv and watching highlights (lowlights) I really think that Ohio State is MUCH better than I thought and really shut down what we have done all year, quick strikes to Cooper that lead to a lot of points in a hurry to run away from teams. There was no way Cooper was getting anything deep over the middle last night and that was just good coaching. Now back to the thread....last year on Jan 2nd we were all talking about how much we would have to change to keep up with the Oklahoma's of the world and it would take a while to develop that type of game. I honestly believe that we had a bad night and really the Bucs coaches were one step ahead of us on playcalling all night. This does not mean we need a change of complete philosophy. Just feed a hot running back when he cant be stopped and make tackles when they are there for us to make. If not for a db falling down and the one real bad habit Blake Sims has of locking on Cooper for the pick six, we would be getting ready for Oregon today. I fully expect us to dominate the SEC west next year and Jake to break all of Sims records and Henry to break a ton of single season records with Drake making big plays also! Defense will be alright. It was exactly as advertised! Strong front, weak secondary. Next year will be much better. How many teams can say that after making it to the first ever playoff. We will get another chance at OSU next year I have a feeling but until then I will cheer for them to win it all because if we are going to lose at least it was to the champ and I still just like to see traditional powers win! Roll Tide and lets jump on the basketball bandwagon now, they should go into conf play at 10-3!!!!

 

[crimsonaudio]

We finished the season ranked 59th in the country in passing defense. Yes, FIFTY NINTH. You can't tell me there are 58 teams with better athletes than we do in the secondary.

IOW, while this is a talent issue, in part, there are also schematic issues that must be addressed. If your defensive philosophy requires you to have sick, 5* DBs all over the secondary, you better make sure you land a bunch of sick, 5* DBs back there or you better change your schemes. We've apparently done neither.

 

[BamaMoon]

We finished the season ranked 59th in the country in passing defense. Yes, FIFTY NINTH. You can't tell me there are 58 teams with better athletes than we do in the secondary.

IOW, while this is a talent issue, in part, there are also schematic issues that mush be addressed. If your defensive philosophy requires you to have sick, 5* DBs all over the secondary, you better make sure you land a bunch of sick, 5* DBs back there or you better change your schemes. We've apparently done neither.

I know you brought it up in the post game thread last night and a few others of us where talking about it too, but then JessN's post-game review was basically the same line of reasoning.

We've seen CNS change his offensive philosphy. Now, we'll see how strongly he's committed to his belief in coaching the secondary the way he does.

It seems he's too infatuated with "technique" than just being althletic and playing the ball and going for ints. We'll see.

 

[CrimsonTut]

As several pundits have noted over the years of the SEC's run, the key ingredient to dominance was the larger, athletic defensive lines in the SEC. The counter to that as been the HUNH and spread formations with quick throws to circumvent that advantage. Plus, OSU had an SEC caliber DL. The southern teams and SEC in particular continue to gather the highest level of incoming talent, just need to find a way to use that talent to counter the counter.

 

[Hoot30]

As several pundits have noted over the years of the SEC's run, the key ingredient to dominance was the larger, athletic defensive lines in the SEC. The counter to that as been the HUNH and spread formations with quick throws to circumvent that advantage. Plus, OSU had an SEC caliber DL. The southern teams and SEC in particular continue to gather the highest level of incoming talent, just need to find a way to use that talent to counter the counter.

How does a defense stop this? Oregon seemed to be getting 5 and 6 yards on FSU all day yesterday making it an effective 1st down play.

 

[russtang]

We finished the season ranked 59th in the country in passing defense. Yes, FIFTY NINTH. You can't tell me there are 58 teams with better athletes than we do in the secondary.

IOW, while this is a talent issue, in part, there are also schematic issues that must be addressed. If your defensive philosophy requires you to have sick, 5* DBs all over the secondary, you better make sure you land a bunch of sick, 5* DBs back there or you better change your schemes. We've apparently done neither.

"Simplifying" the defense and let the athletes make plays at full speed instead of constantly thinking about what to do would help IMO.
With the way the game has changed, you have to take chances with the pass rush and the DB's making big plays.

What's most bothersome is that defense and DB's in particular are CNS and CKS's specialty.

CNS is a smart man and made a big change on offense with CLK. We will see if he is willing to make big changes on the D side with scheme/philosophy.

With that said, we still had many opportunities to win the game in spite of the bad play on D.

 

[Rolltidegirl205]

Agree and this makes me nervous for the future of our team.

 

[JessN]

Not buying the whole argument about the philosophy about the defense as a whole needs to change. The D we have should stopped this team last night enough times for us to win. My biggest concern is fundamentals with tackling. Was very apparent in the first quarter. Seems like they were focusing on dropping shoulders instead of wrapping up. In return, OSU was very solid with their tackling technique. Also seems like Bama wasn't expecting OSU to be as physical as they were and part of that may have been to them listing to what the pundits were reporting on OSU not being able to be as physical.

With all that being said, Bama has to keep focus on playing in a way that makes teams quit on both sides of the ball for a full game ... especially on defense. I think part of it was they thought the game was in hand after we got up 21-6. Again though, they had a solid season and believe they will be in a good position to compete for a title next year as well. Just depends on a few intangibles.

The problem with defensive scheme discussion is that if this was just limited to Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl, I'd agree with you. But it's not. Alabama has struggled with this offense now since 2007. It is what it is, to borrow Saban's favorite phrase.

And there's a technical reason for that: Alabama's defense works on matchups and packages. Tempo hurts this type of defense more than any other, because it limits the amount of package substitutions Alabama can make. To put a baseball spin on it, Alabama has a starting lineup almost completely made up of platoon players. You can set the lineup to face the lefty starter by bringing in all your right-handed bats, but then the opposing manager starts using his bullpen and flips the script on you.

Alabama cannot -- that's CANNOT, not "might not" -- be successful unless it can match up. The problem was worse this year than it's ever been because Alabama didn't have a lot of three-down players at its disposal. A'Shawn Robinson is one. Jarran Reed is another. Dickson and Ragland are probably two others. DePriest did his best to be one but he lacks the lateral quickness needed for this defense. Having said that, he's the hidden gem of 2014 because he played so far above his previous ability level that he needs to be praised for it, but he still came up well short of where Mosley was for Alabama the last couple of years. When a maximum of four guys out of your front seven don't have to be subbed out just to change the look of the front, that's not good. The problem then continued into the back end, where Alabama had one CB playing winning ball (Jones), one good safety who got hurt in both of Alabama's losses (Collins) and a lot of issues. None of the other safeties were every-down guys. Watching Geno Smith try to play the run against the most physical teams was painful at times. And then Jackson went into a slump at the end and it all came apart.

I'm not saying Saban will change his schemes, but he either has to change them or he has to recruit guys who can play more downs against spread offenses. The old-school noseguard is now just a package player. The days of having two big OLBs who can walk up into a five-man front are probably the next to go. Take a look at OSU's SLB, Darron Lee -- 225 pounds and could play all three downs. Had 7 tackles, 3 for loss, 2 sacks and disrupted pass routes across the middle. Denzel Devall can't do that. He's not functional as a stand-up OLB on a passing down unless he's rushing the quarterback.

So either the scheme has to be modified, or the recruiting has to change. But continuing to do the same thing is just going to get the same results.

 

[BAMAVILLE]

So either the scheme has to be modified, or the recruiting has to change. But continuing to do the same thing is just going to get the same results.

i do agree with your sentiments on that and we can see some of those changes taken effect with the last two recruiting classes on the defensive side of the ball with the recruiting change in the type of LBs and DBs and even DEs we normally have had in the past.

I think a lot of this will show up with the 2016 team. Hoping it will be the case next year but thinking the defense will be similar to the same talent-wise unless Tony and Humphrey progresses faster than expected. That will at least give us a chance to move around some other pieces to Safety. I think a lot of our success will be predicated on the success of our LB/DB corps moreso on our DBs. The defenses that have been successful in that mold outside of ours have been Ole Miss and LSU and its because of the fact they use athletic LBs and ball-hawking DBs. For an example, in 2012, Kwon Alexander ended up going to LSU at the time partly because of his size. With our current pattern of recruiting, he would be the type of LB we're looking for, ie Reshaan Evans and Christan Miller.

But to go along with your sentiments, if we can consistent 4-down play from all DB positions and sure up fundamentals like wrapping up on tackling, I think we will see a huge difference in this D again.

 

[TideFan in AU]

The problem with defensive scheme discussion is that if this was just limited to Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl, I'd agree with you. But it's not. Alabama has struggled with this offense now since 2007. It is what it is, to borrow Saban's favorite phrase.

And there's a technical reason for that: Alabama's defense works on matchups and packages. Tempo hurts this type of defense more than any other, because it limits the amount of package substitutions Alabama can make. To put a baseball spin on it, Alabama has a starting lineup almost completely made up of platoon players. You can set the lineup to face the lefty starter by bringing in all your right-handed bats, but then the opposing manager starts using his bullpen and flips the script on you.

Alabama cannot -- that's CANNOT, not "might not" -- be successful unless it can match up. The problem was worse this year than it's ever been because Alabama didn't have a lot of three-down players at its disposal. A'Shawn Robinson is one. Jarran Reed is another. Dickson and Ragland are probably two others. DePriest did his best to be one but he lacks the lateral quickness needed for this defense. Having said that, he's the hidden gem of 2014 because he played so far above his previous ability level that he needs to be praised for it, but he still came up well short of where Mosley was for Alabama the last couple of years. When a maximum of four guys out of your front seven don't have to be subbed out just to change the look of the front, that's not good. The problem then continued into the back end, where Alabama had one CB playing winning ball (Jones), one good safety who got hurt in both of Alabama's losses (Collins) and a lot of issues. None of the other safeties were every-down guys. Watching Geno Smith try to play the run against the most physical teams was painful at times. And then Jackson went into a slump at the end and it all came apart.

I'm not saying Saban will change his schemes, but he either has to change them or he has to recruit guys who can play more downs against spread offenses. The old-school noseguard is now just a package player. The days of having two big OLBs who can walk up into a five-man front are probably the next to go. Take a look at OSU's SLB, Darron Lee -- 225 pounds and could play all three downs. Had 7 tackles, 3 for loss, 2 sacks and disrupted pass routes across the middle. Denzel Devall can't do that. He's not functional as a stand-up OLB on a passing down unless he's rushing the quarterback.

So either the scheme has to be modified, or the recruiting has to change. But continuing to do the same thing is just going to get the same results.

You make great points, and I do think that some adjustments need to made to the scheme. It is nearly impossible elite players at every position, although CNS has come close to that a few times here. I think there needs to be a shake up in how some of the coverages are schemed, because it seems that the good OC's we're facing have figured out our tendencies. Your analysis also points out the glaring fact that we have one CB playing well and one safety playing well. That point cannot be ignored. Without that being the case, we're talking about Oregon today. For whatever reason, we have hit a lull in talent in the secondary. Until that is corrected, we're going to struggle regardless of tweaks or changes in the defensive scheme. You can only hide players that aren't performing at a high level so much.

 

[CoachJeff]

Isn't Saban recruiting more 3 down guys already? Didn't we bring in some guys in the 2014 class that for that bill?

It seems Saban is working on fixing this, but it takes a year or two before the kids can contribute.

 

[TideFan in AU]

Isn't Saban recruiting more 3 down guys already? Didn't we bring in some guys in the 2014 class that for that bill?

It seems Saban is working on fixing this, but it takes a year or two before the kids can contribute.

Yes, that is what he is trying to do, and our D line made a marked improvement from last year. The problem is that we lost CJ, Ha Ha, Vinny, and Belue, so back the end suffered from that this year. Losing 2 first rounders and, our best run stopping safety, and best cover corner from last year hurt us because the guys that replaced them are not playing on that level. There are several young guys that are at least physically (and potentially) a major upgrade from the guys playing now. We just have to hope that it all comes together in the next 2 years.

 

[BAMAVILLE]

Isn't Saban recruiting more 3 down guys already? Didn't we bring in some guys in the 2014 class that for that bill?

It seems Saban is working on fixing this, but it takes a year or two before the kids can contribute.

I totally agree. I give Saban full credit for doing the things as a program to keep Bama relevant and viable to compete for championships. I know this is a recruting note but bringing in Minkah Fitzpatrick and other DBs like Delonte is going to be big with going with Tony, Marlon and the guys we brought in this year.

 

[RobK]

I totally agree. I give Saban full credit for doing the things as a program to keep Bama relevant and viable to compete for championships. I know this is a recruting note but bringing in Minkah Fitzpatrick and other DBs like Delonte is going to be big with going with Tony, Marlon and the guys we brought in this year.

Also, remember that Marlon Humphrey and Tony Brown were 2 of the top 4 corners nationally in last year's class, and Minkah Fitzpatrick is #2 in this class. Pretty hard to top that, assuming they all pan out.

 

[bamacpa]

C. Jones joins an ever growing list, it seems, of QB`s that are either new, undistinguished, or previously "average" for whom we present an opportunity to have a coming out party, if not a career day. Maybe, however, I`m overly sensitive on this, but it sure feels like it`s the case. Anybody else?

The list of QBs with career days against us recently includes 12 Gauge Jones, Travis Knight, Nick Marshall, Stephen Garcia, and Bo Wallace. Lots of insurance salesmen on that list.

 

[dWarriors88]

Why God why God whyy oh god whyy

 

[braggtd]

The list of QBs with career days against us recently includes 12 Gauge Jones, Travis Knight, Nick Marshall, Stephen Garcia, and Bo Wallace. Lots of insurance salesmen on that list.

No doubt. It really is amazing considering what our scheme use to do to passing games. My question is and I know it has been discussed before, but are we misfiring on recruits or is the scheme outdated?

 

[bamacpa]

No doubt. It really is amazing considering what our scheme use to do to passing games. My question is and I know it has been discussed before, but are we misfiring on recruits or is the scheme outdated?

I think modern football is built more around the pass and quick throws to negate the impact of pass rush. Offenses are more capable in the passing game, and elite athletes that used to end up at other positions are playing offensive skill positions.

 

[bamanix]

qb jones, was harassed quite a bit last night, but, he is big and quick. he capilized on our weak secondary, and failure as has failed most of the season 3d down runs up the gut by qb draws. we stretch our linebackers, and they don't have the speed to cover from perimeter to perimeter. our secondary unlike past years rarely, was able to complement our linebackers on the perimeter with good tackling. basically two running plays Elliott tackle outside gained over 200 yards, jones draws up the gut, and a secondary that cannot cover anyone. Collins was the only legitimate secondary player. offense, it was just a matter when was the sims to cooper passing parade going have problems. last night state stoped the cooper game, and sims missed two touchdown open plays to howard, and no one else had a chance, such as fowler, white. we rushed well, the off line blocked well in the run game. could have continued that. most disappointed in the drive where sims decided to run the ball three times, and got nothing. I really think our secondary coaching needs to simplify coverages, and allow the talent of our 5 stars, and 4 stars to develop their play with out having to be complete clones on the field. we need to insert linebackers like evans to cover from sideline to sideline and rush the qb.