Still dealing with the family emergency I mentioned earlier. I apologize for the lack of updates. I should be back to regular blogging by Thursday or so. In the meantime, a friend of mine, Todd (who is a user on this site), will be posting some to tide you over (no pun intended.)
Here are some random thoughts about Saturday's game.
- Okay, what in the world is going on with Ken Darby? He's about to run himself out of a job. 65 yards on 21 carries? Abyssmal. He doesn't have a hundred yards in the first two games combined. Jimmy Johns is running the ball waaaaaaaay better, but is only getting a third as many carries. If Darby doesn't do better against Louisiana-Monroe, I'll be ready to see Jimmy Johns get the start against Arkansas.
- Turnovers. Good grief. Two fumbles inside the 10 yard-line? I bet our defense frequently wants to kill our offense due to their frequent screw ups. Three turnovers will get us killed against a better team. The only thing that helped us was that Vandy had four turnovers.
- Speaking of offense (or the lack thereof), why does this team turn retarted inside of the 25 yard line? Oh yeah, it's not that the players get any less talented, it's that the playcalling gets infinitely more conservative. If a bunch of us sitting up in the cheapseats know what plays are about to be called, I have a pretty good feeling coaches making six or seven figure salaries know too. If you're a coach of one of the 10 remaining teams on Alabama's schedule, let me save you time on film watching. Here's how it'll go inside the 25: 1st down-run; 2nd down-run; 3rd & long: pass. 4th down: field goal. Alabama has scored eight times this year and five of them have been field goals (there's also been a missed field goal.)
- Thanks for all of the penalties in the 4th quarter Chris Capps.
- I hope Joe Kines can get through to our defense at some point. Over pursuit has been the bane of our defense so far. I know we've only given up 27 points over two games, but we've been testing the limits of a "bend but don't break" defensive philosophy. When we come up against the firepower of Florida, LSU or Auburn, we're going to be in serious trouble.
- I'm stil feeling pretty good about John Parker Wilson. His 31-yard TD pass to DJ Hall was a thing of beauty. A perfect pass to a player that ran a perfect route. He did throw one INT and threw a few risky balls into double coverage a time or two. Hopefully those are young QB mistakes that will quickly weed themselves out. I'd like to see us pass more, especially on earlier downs.
- At some point this year, we will get bitten by the "playing not to lose" philosophy that's been exhibited so far. Running up the middle several plays in a row while hoping to eek out enough for a first down with 5+ minutes left is hard to watch. Letting the play clock hit "01" before calling timeout before a punt is sometimes necessary, but I feel this mentality will be habitual and will hurt us at some point.
- I'm hoping the fact that it was 12 trillion degrees in the stadium is part of the reason we saw such lackluster performances by both teams.
- We're 2-0 and I will always take an ugly win over an artistic loss, but I'm not feeling good about the season right now. I'm sure we'll finish with a winning record but we won't beat the "big" teams on the schedule playing like this.