Jumbo Package: Nate Oats not satisfied despite 115 point outburst, Nick Saban talks playoff expansion

Happy Monday, everyone. As you already know, Alabama beat Georgia on Saturday with a historic scoring output, but there is still improvement to be made.

‘It’s the best Herb has played since he took the initial fall,” Oats said. “It’s like we’ve been saying. Sitting him doesn’t get him any better. He hasn’t taken a hit the last three or four games, but he needed to get some rust knocked off from not practicing.’

The key for Alabama now?

Don’t be deceived by the 115 points, any more than it was by the NCAA Bracket reveal. Shooting masks all sins but issues with turnovers were still a bit of a problem and it wasn’t the Crimson Tide’s best defensive effort of the season.

indeed, you can’t count on shooting north of 60% from three on a regular basis. Here’s what Nate Oats had to say.

His team just set a school record for points scored in a SEC game, and he’s talking about how they lost the blue collar points. This is why he’s a great coach.

Speaking of great coaches, Nick Saban weighed in on the parity thing, or lack thereof, where playoffs are concerned.

“So I just wonder sometimes if having a Playoff and bowl games, and that was the unique thing about bowl games in college football, a lot of players got self gratification for having good seasons,” Saban said. “They got to go to a bowl game, their families, the program, everything sort of got some positive self gratification of what they were able to accomplish even though they weren’t national championship caliber or Playoff caliber.

“Now that’s all been diminished a little bit. You just wonder to yourself, can Playoff and bowl games co-exist, or should we just have more teams in the Playoff? I’m not saying I’m for it or against it. I think that’s the question people need to answer.”

Nick never wanted a playoff, and neither did I. That ship has sailed, of course, and he’s probably right that expansion is inevitable.

As Cecil Hurt notes, any A-Day is a good thing right now.

Many of the usual A-Day ceremonies may have to wait. There probably won’t be the traditional placement of the UA football captains’ footprints and handprints around Denny Chimes until 2022, by which time there will need to be enough cement poured to start work on a good-sized building (like “cough” a new Coleman Coliseum for instance). There has been no parade for the 2020 CFP Championship team, no word on whether there will be a White House visit, much less when.

For those less interested in the trappings and more focused on football, A-Day is always especially scrutinized in years when the quarterback position is newly vacant. There are few people who have seen Bryce Young, the presumptive front-runner, in a scrimmage situation.

That, however, is “normal” football talk, perhaps the best thing as Alabama football and the surrounding world take baby steps to normality.

Trey Sanders still has a long road ahead of him, but he’s putting in the work.

Hopefully he is able to get back to his old self. It’s awful that he suffered such an injury in the first place.

We got some sad news yesterday as Lorenzo Washington passed away unexpectedly.

Washington, 34, was a member of the Crimson Tide from 2005-09 and helped Alabama win a BCS National Championship as a senior during the 2009 season. After redshirting in 2005, the native of Loganville, Ga., appeared in 46 career games at the collegiate level — first for Mike Shula then Nick Saban — and he registered 69 tackles, 12.0 tackles for loss and 6.0 sacks.

Washington went undrafted in 2010 but spent three years in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots, New York Jets and Detroit Lions as part of offseason/practice squads.

No details have been released about cause of death. Lorenzo was a solid rotational player on the line. Our condolences go out to his family.

Last, Gus Malzahn is headed to UCF.

So, they hired the coach that Scott Frost beat to win their “national title.” This should go over well.

That’s about it for today. Have a great week.

Roll Tide.