With the Iron Bowl complete, Alabama's 2011 regular season has come to a close. The particular post-season destination has yet to be determined but, for now, lets take a look back at where this squad stands in comparison with the rest of college football after a dozen games. For comparison sake, here are the September and October versions of this rundown.
Here are all the categories from the NCAA's 2011 FBS Football Statistics page that Alabama appears in the top ten.
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As you probably have heard, the Alabama defense is pretty darned good this year. How good? How about 1992-level good. You have to go back to Gene Stallings National Championship squad to find an Alabama defense that performed better than the 2011 version - and even then it's only a difference of degree.
On the offensive side of the ball, the engine that makes it all go is Number 3. With the bowl game still ahead, Trent Richardson holds the school season rushing touchdown record and he's just 75 yards shy of breaking Mark Ingram's season rushing record. Without a doubt, this season he's has absolutely lived up to the considerable hype that has followed him his whole career at the Capstone.
And a testament to the focus of this squad are the extremely low penalty and turnover's lost numbers. Coach Saban preaches the elimination of mistakes and few teams he's led onto the field have done it better.
After the jump are the rest of the Alabama team and individual rankings.
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What this graph tells us is that April 26 is going to be bittersweet as hell. Between the guys we know who will be high draft picks and the seniors whose production earned them a place on this list, attrition next year will be brutal. But lets not get ahead of ourselves...
One thing that sticks out is how AJ McCarron has emerged as a very reliable passer. He may not be in Greg McElroy's league when it comes to passing efficiency but he's done quite well for his inaugural season in the fire against SEC defenses. Make no mistake, there's still a ton of work to be done but if he can finally develop that vertical passing threat we all dream about next season we'll be cooking with hot grease.
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The consensus about the Alabama offense this year is that the running game is world class and the passing game mediocre. There's nothing in these numbers to disabuse you of those notions. But the end result is an offense that's in the top third of college football in terms of yards and inside 16th in terms of points. That's not something to sniff at.
What matters more is that Alabama's 3rd down efficiency is just outside of the top ten nationally and leads the conference. In fact, this year's squad performs significantly better in this department than both 2010 (44.37) and 2009 (39.18). When the chains need to be moved, this unit finds ways to get it done. That's also reflected in the red zone numbers although not to the same degree due to the smaller sample size.
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Well, pretty much the entirety of this section is already posted above its worth noting a few categories that aren't in the top tier nationally. One surprising ranking is passes intercepted where Alabama is tied for 42nd and slap dab in the middle of the SEC pack. Over the past two year's Alabama has been one of the country's leaders in this category but this year the numbers are about half those final marks. It's an interesting development for such a dominant defense, to be sure.
Even more perplexing is the woeful fumble recovery numbers. Now we've looked at the details of the turnover statistics in the past and noted this is an extremely random statistic but there are only eight teams in all of college football who have recovered fewer fumbles than Alabama this year. Yet the Crimson Tide's fumble recovery percentage is 40% and that's a lot closer to the mean - just as we expected in the wake of last year's bizarre numbers.
Once again, sacks and tackles for loss stats are less than one would expect but, by now, we've seen enough success out of the defensive front seven to trust Coach Saban's admonition that these two categories are ancillary to the performance of the unit.
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Yes, punting and kickoff return defense are just about where you expect if you've been watching at all for the past few months. But, as you saw at the start of this post, Marquis Maze is in the top ten in the nation for punt returns, giving a boost to Alabama's KO return numbers and turbocharging the punt return totals.