Seven Reasons Alabama Wins it All in 2011

‘09 rushing success vs. ’10 rushing — injuries, many injuries, and opponents loading up with the knowledge they must stop us running or be crushed. ’10 was more like ’08 — with Andre Smith and Antoine Caldwell, we were a very good offense; without Andre, we were just good; and the ’08 D was never able to just take over a game. ’09’s D could.

Here’s hoping the O line is better. Richardson and our stable of hoss RBs look forward to it.

This season, IIRC, we only face 4 teams coming off bye weeks (and we have a bye for one of them?). So, that’s better than ’10.

Leadership is the biggest factor, to my mind. Peek said when they came together to start ‘09 practices, they all came together from that moment, recalling just how ’08 fell short, and they talked about the commitment it would take to reach the top…. and we all loved the end of that story. Can’t wait to see the ’11 team get started…!

I am not saying the QB will be better than GMaC. I’m only saying that we’ll be going back to what works, the running game. The reason we didn’t run as much in 2010 had little to do with faith in the offensive line because Bama RBs had more yds per carry in 2010 than they did in 2009. Meaning, the rushing OL increased their performance this past year. But Saban shifted focus on the offense. There was a lot of talk in the spring of letting McElroy unleash his arm on Maze and Jones.

Maze will most likely be the main return man, with Corey Grant, Deandrew White, and Blake Sims getting looks over true freshman. Saban’s primary concern in that area is trust that the return man won’t fumble the ball.

I googled a photo for both and this is the picture it pulled up. My bad.

Our running attack suffered not because of the offensive line, but because of poor play calling along with the shift in emphasis from a running attack to a passing attack. We heard this all throughout the off season. We went from a running team that tries to set up the pass, to a passing team that tries to set up the run. The results were disastrous as our QB liked to hold onto the ball too long, and was sacked several times in virtually every game resulting in a couple of crucial fumbled turnovers. So many times the Tide would punch the ball into the red zone with a balanced running attack, and then they’d go three and out on three straight pass attempts, usually leaving with a FG or missed FG, as was the case against USC.

TWE done called bullshit on this.

?

This barely qualifies as a reasonable blog post. An article it is not.

I don’t know what McElwain was thinking. Every time they were in the wildcat formation, the play was ALWAYS the same. I watched every game and I think they ran the wildcat maybe 40-50 times all year. In each instance the guy receiveing the snap ran up the middle… or at least tried to. The crossing slot man never took the ball.

Football is like a chess match. You have to guess what the opponent is trying to do. If the defense can guess where you’re going to run the ball in any given formation, then I don’t care how good your RB is, they will stop you. And if I could predict the plays according to formation, I’m sure the opposing coaches could too.

IIRC, he generally played between 360 and 370. Nearly a 10% difference in body weight. Point being that 340 is NOT Cody’s “exact measurements”.

for spelling his name with an ‘-ie.’

to be what Cody was NOT … out there on every down, including 3rd down. Whether Saban and Smart leave him out there, will be determined after spring drills. As far as our offense goes, it’s gonna be fine. I look for play-action to be more down/distance oriented, as it should be. There were times this year, (read: “shitty play calls”) when we just didn’t have the personnel to get it done on the ground. Zone blocking requires coordination…throw in an injury or two, and you have a major issue blocking some of the Prop 48 victims in the SEC…then the run game fails. Leave these guys alone..covet your stats, and watch these young guys come out and show what they can do. Trust me, they won’t be out there if the staff thinks they can’t get it done.

Agreed on all your points.

==But the fact is: teams were able to limit our rushing success and GMac was unable to consistently make them pay for their choice.

I disagree with the first point. The rushing game was more successful in 2010 if the data tells us anything. Sure, there were a couple of games where we were held to 3-4 yds per carry, but the same is true of 2009 when Arkansas held us to 3.3 and Auburn held us to 2.1. Where we went wrong was when we shifted focus off the run. The games we came close to losing last year were games that Saban decided to let McElroy try to take over a game with his arm. Seriously, we almost lost the Tennessee game because of this. We rushed fewer times in that game than any other. We’d generally punch the ball into the redzone with the run, and then Saban would let McElroy go three and out with the pass, which is why we only had FGs.

== Having said that, I do not think that running the ball more would have been more successful. The decent defenses that we played against were able to prove that we could not sustain drives with a rush/pass ratio of 2 to 1. Our most successful drives of the year had either a 1 to 1 rush/pass ratio or consisted of more passes than runs.

I’ll look into that, but I believe most of our disappointing and crucial drives ended on two pass attempts in a row. The big one against Auburn comes to mind. We had the ball in FG range to win the game and then with two back to back pass attempts McElroy gets sacked and we’re out of FG range.

== I thought the play calling for the year was pretty good, trying to take what the defenses would give us. But even if you disagree with me on that, I don’t see how you can deny that the defensive sets affected our play calling, limiting what we could accomplish on the ground.

But the defenses didn’t stop our running game when we kept pounding them, and our play was so predictable it was ridiculous. For example, the wildcat. I think we ran it 40-50 times all year and it was almost always the snap receiver taking it up the middle. If there was one exception, I never saw it.

== In hindsight, it is also clear that the injuries on the offensive line negatively affected our production more than we expected. The play calling was also affected by the injuries.

There were a couple of instances I recall, such as Anthony Steen’s failure to block Fairley and recover the crucial fumble, but these were exceptions I think.

== I think the staff had more confidence in the pass blocking of the backups than in their run blocking.

Why though? The RBs averaged more per carry than the year before while the line gives up 30 sacks.

== Dont forget either that both Ingram and Richardson struggled with injuries this year.

And when they did, Lacey came in and outperformed them.

== I thought Richardson looked absolutely awful in the Auburn game (not just the dropped pass; he was not able to make his cuts) and Lacy struggled a tad with fumbles.

Lacey averaged more per carry than both of them, and Trent got hurt early in the Auburn game. It was first and goal on the three and he rushed three times in a row I think, hurting his back on the last carry which was a TD. AU put 8 in the box of course.

== So, it didn’t look to me as if Saban decided to re-vamp the entire offense at the expense of the running game.

How do you explain the fact that he opened up the season against a cupcake, and threw three straight passes in a row? He also continued to pummel them with passes with the game well in hand. Overall we balanced it out more with a run to pass ratio of 34:35, but 10 of those runs came late in the 4th quarter only because they were trying to run the clock out. When they had an early 21-3 lead, the backup McCarron comes in and doesn’t stop throwing the ball until it is 27-3. McElroy then came back into the game and ended the first half with SIX STRAIGHT passing plays. With a 38-3 lead in the third, McCarron comes back in and throws the ball on four of the last six plays of the drive. This they did in spite of the fact that our second and third string running backs were averaging 8.5 and 6.0 yds per carry. Why would he do this if he wasn’t trying to make an opening statement on the season? By contrast, in 2009 we started against our first cupcake team with 42 rushes and only 24 pass plays. Huge difference, eh? Did Saban really think he had to counter San Jose State’s attempt to stack up against the run? This is San Jose!

== The only significant change in the offense that I noticed was an attempt to get the ball in the hands of Julio more often. That just seemed very smart to me, even if it costs the RB’s some carries.

It cost us more than that, in my opinion. Sure, he can break it loose on occasion, but when your passing game is obviously based on the quick slant or the one-step drop back pass to the sidelines, then defenses can adjust to this just as well as they can a running game. Bama started the 4th quarter against LSU with two pass plays in a row, resulting in an incomplete a sack and a three and out. With a 14-13 lead they only had the ball for 4:58 in the entire 4th quarter. Why? Because of their misplaced reliance on the pass. They ran 17 plays in the fourth quarter and 14 of them were pass plays resulting in 1 TD, two sacks and a crucial turnover. Trent touched the ball once for 5 yds, and Ingram ran it twice for 16 yds. So 21 yds on three carries… hmmmm. That doesn’t sound like the defense had the rushing game locked down.

== I think it makes sense for you to assume at this point that Saban will not rely on a new qb to do too much.

Just basing it on history. He wasn’t trigger happy with first year starter McElroy.

== However, I don’t expect a huge change in the offensive philosophy from the one we saw in both 2009 and 2010. We don’t recruit highly rated pro-style qb’s because of their ability to hand the ball off.

McElroy was a three star from what I recall. And I doubt he is recruiting the likes of Richardson and Crowell while telling them we’re going to be anything BUT a running team.

== The other claim about freshman returners seems to me to be almost nutty. Maze will be a very solid senior returner (It’s not fair to compare him to Javy.)

Well, I was comparing the 2010 special teams with the 2009 team so I had to compare to Javy. He was a big reason why we went all the way in 2009. Field position is very important as you know. Anyway, thanks for your feedback and your respectful disagreements.

Don’t speak ill of them!!

/sarcasm

subtlety is underrated.

I believe if bama would have kept its strategy of running first and passing second we would back to back champs right now.