The Good, The Bad and The Ugly…. USU Aggie style-

[gtgilbert]

I genuinely respect your opinion, but the Alabama coaches gave one of three offensive game balls to Dalcourt. The other two were given to Young and Holden. The SEC named DD SEC Offensive Lineman of the week. I assume the SEC award was recommended by the Alabama staff, IDK, but they seem convinced that he played well.

I know that I've given up trying to evaluate OL play, but I don't have any training. My recollection is that you do.

That's what's got me perplexed. I do have some background in OL, but honestly, without knowing what the details of the blocking scheme and assignments are, it's really hard to eval the individuals in a unit. my guess is that in this weeks scheme, the OGs were expected to handle the DTs with very little help - likely just a chip from DD before he was supposed to move on to the second level. There were also some down blocks from DD with the OGs pulling or cross-blocking. It didn't help that the camera angles on TV didn't give much of a view. Either way though, there just wasn't a big push off the LOS in many cases. As for POW, I thought DDs biggest issue last year was communication and making sure everyone around him knew what to do, and I'd bet the coaches thought he did a better job of that so rewarded him for the progress.

 

[STONECOLDSABAN]

Agree. Saban did say that defensive plan was a good thing. Maybe what you said is why. He also said the run game needs work. Maybe the Utah St game provided help in what to correct. CNS really did use that game for practice. Shuffling players in and out, and etc. We'll see if it pays off Saturday.

Yeah, key thing to remember. He said he "wasn't disappointed" in the run game. Just that it was inconsistent, and they needed to work on it.

 

[gtgilbert]

I genuinely respect your opinion, but the Alabama coaches gave one of three offensive game balls to Dalcourt. The other two were given to Young and Holden. The SEC named DD SEC Offensive Lineman of the week. I assume the SEC award was recommended by the Alabama staff, IDK, but they seem convinced that he played well.

I know that I've given up trying to evaluate OL play, but I don't have any training. My recollection is that you do.

Not sure when Saban said these things, but the article just popped up for me today.

https://247sports.com/college/alaba...ay-potential-on-SEC-teleconference-192863839/

When asked about not being happy with the RBs:

“I don’t remember saying anything about the running back room. I thought they played pretty well in the game. We had good production. We played lots of players. They all executed well. They continue to do a good job this week. So maybe I’m not thinking right or maybe I sort of misled somebody, but I thought those guys all played pretty well in the game.”

translated: when I was talking about the running game not being consistent, I wasn't talking about the RBs

When asked about OL play:

“I think there were times when they did a really, really good job. I think we can always look to improve in certain areas. One of the things that probably we wanna improve on a little bit is blocking movement up front. "