JessN: 2024 Fall Preview: Alabama Crimson Tide

[Ledsteplin]

I noticed that tid-bit too and it raised my eyebrows.

I also think it is of interest that AM has apparently been lining up as the #3. Apparently, his development is coming along especially considering how so many are so high on Lonergan.

AM practiced DeBoer's offense last year. He's ahead of the others in that regard. I think he'll be good.

 

[JessN]

Couple of guys have been practicing at spots different from what's described.

Russaw has been next in line behind Robinson and Koht at "wolf" instead of Bandit. Guess he could land at either, but would think he needs a lot of mass to play bandit, just when compared to the other guys in that group.

Renaud has been with the Bandit group instead of inside with the DTs. Interestingly, they have the Bandits do a lot of the individual drills in the same group with the DTs versus being over with the wolf guys who are also edge players.

Moore has been back at true S more than down in the box, with D Smith as the 'husky' or box S.

First, on Renaud: He's been seen inside as well and I think he can end up in either spot. I think Overton has put on enough weight to slide inside when we're in and-long passing situations. We do have a package where we use three of the tackles together (earlier in the year, it was with James Smith outside, which caused some confusion with our spring depth charts because one of our sources observed him working there and it sounded like we were going to have two kinds of Bandits -- big Bandits and little Bandits, depending on what the front called for). It would not surprise me to see Renaud spend more time at Bandit, at least this year, because ...

Russaw: We're overloaded at Wolf right now especially in comparison to Bandit. Both the old Jack and SLB positions combined to make up Wolf. Additionally, Russaw has gotten bigger since the spring and was already closer to a standard DE size before. So if we have big Bandits and little Bandits, we either also have little Wolves and big Wolves, or we're just going to be thin at the Bandit spot. Of the Wolves we have, Russaw is most likely to be able to jump over and provide depth at both spots. Then throw in the package we have with Campbell coming down to play an edge spot (with Jefferson coming in at ILB) and that's another leaner guy off the edge.

What it sounds like to me is we're going to have guys from the front six intermingling a lot across the depth chart depending on how we want to attack the offense. Remember that our base front under Saban didn't just go to a 4-man front; at times, it was a 2-4-5 sub front with twin Jacks in a DE posture alongside the tackles. And some of our fans lost their minds over it because to them that meant we were getting "small" (synonym for "soft").

On Moore, about 12 hours after this went to print, DeBoer named Devonta Smith the guy (for now) at Husky ahead of Red Morgan. We've already made the change in the depth chart that will run with the opening game preview. I do expect Moore to play multiple roles, though.

I found this a very interesting nugget in the quarterback section. I'm assuming these two have made dramatic strides since the spring? Also, I wish there was a little more information about Ty Simpson and if he's gotten better, worse or just stayed the same from the spring.


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I've been told they are high on Lonergan, internally. But I also don't think it's a secret that Austin Mack is going to get every chance to be the guy in 2 years, if not sooner. As for the comment on general quality, that's my take on it from seeing these guys -- there are 134 FBS schools and yeah, I think any of Bama's four are better than at least 67 of the starters elsewhere.

I’m a bit surprised that Jess said Jihaad Campbell doesn’t have much playing experience. That’s totally incorrect.

Not really: Campbell is a rising junior who has the equivalent of about 1 full year of playing time, thanks to not playing a ton as a true freshman, then rotating last year with other players and being hurt besides.

I noticed that tid-bit too and it raised my eyebrows.

I also think it is of interest that AM has apparently been lining up as the #3. Apparently, his development is coming along especially considering how so many are so high on Lonergan.

See above.

 

[gtgilbert]

First, on Renaud: He's been seen inside as well and I think he can end up in either spot. I think Overton has put on enough weight to slide inside when we're in and-long passing situations. We do have a package where we use three of the tackles together (earlier in the year, it was with James Smith outside, which caused some confusion with our spring depth charts because one of our sources observed him working there and it sounded like we were going to have two kinds of Bandits -- big Bandits and little Bandits, depending on what the front called for). It would not surprise me to see Renaud spend more time at Bandit, at least this year, because ...

Russaw: We're overloaded at Wolf right now especially in comparison to Bandit. Both the old Jack and SLB positions combined to make up Wolf. Additionally, Russaw has gotten bigger since the spring and was already closer to a standard DE size before. So if we have big Bandits and little Bandits, we either also have little Wolves and big Wolves, or we're just going to be thin at the Bandit spot. Of the Wolves we have, Russaw is most likely to be able to jump over and provide depth at both spots. Then throw in the package we have with Campbell coming down to play an edge spot (with Jefferson coming in at ILB) and that's another leaner guy off the edge.

What it sounds like to me is we're going to have guys from the front six intermingling a lot across the depth chart depending on how we want to attack the offense. Remember that our base front under Saban didn't just go to a 4-man front; at times, it was a 2-4-5 sub front with twin Jacks in a DE posture alongside the tackles. And some of our fans lost their minds over it because to them that meant we were getting "small" (synonym for "soft").

interesting perspective. It's going to be fun watching how all this plays out, especially with these 'new' positions and how the roster fits into some slightly different roles.

IMHO, I actually think we are really more thin at Wolf than we are at Bandit even though maybe we have more guys in the Wolf line.

We can't just use Sabans JLB prototype as the go forward path, but as you stated it is pretty similar to the wolf role. Looking at the run of those Edge guys it's been Braswell, Turner, W Anderson, Sanders, Allen, T Lewis, A Jennings and Ryan Anderson. The smallest of them was Allen at 244, then Turner at 247. Everyone else was 250+ Smaller guys like Tim Williams and Christian Miller were used almost exclusively as pass rush guys - i.e. Rabbits

The other two data points we can use are what guys USA and UW had at Wolf. USA's starter last year was 255+ and the backup was 247. UW had guys at 254 and 260.

So through those lenses, if we are to use the newly released roster weights, Robinson(241), Koht(242), Pierre(239), Ross(239) and Carter(242) are undersized for Wolf, with Russaw (251) being the closest to what we saw under Saban, but still slightly smaller than examples from USA and UW. All the other guys would have been rabbits. Campbell (244) is bigger than all those guys except Russaw which is why it's likely there's a package with him sliding to the outside spot with another guy inside.

At Bandit, we've got Latham(278), Overton(283), Keeley(277) Renaud(268) and potentially Hill(275) in the mix. UW depth last year was 273 and 275 while USA had 269 and 268. All our guys are in the range we can see where this scheme has been used so that gives us more guys that fit the potential prototype at Bandit versus Wolf where honestly none of them are really there. Also with Renaud being the smallest, I think it's less likely he slides inside to DT than any of the other guys, other than in a sub-package type alignment.

I do think we could see tremendous variability in how we use all these guys though, just like we had under the prior scheme. You referenced it, but Saban had so many different variations for all the different roles - things that a vast majority of folks never really even saw- many thought we just had 3DL, but the reality was that there were still really 3 true roles in there and Sabans scheme would use them in different ways all the time. Add in the various ways we used the OLB/Edge guys and their were a ton of combo's. Too many, maybe, but for a data/detail guy it was fun to watch and see all the various alignments and groupings

Going forward It would not shock me at all to see a pass rush specialist package with 2 Bandits and 2 Wolves and no DTs or a single DT, with a bandit and two wolves or two bandits and a wolf and a lot of this could be opponent/matchup specific as well as down/distance situations. I also would not be surprised to see a 'Heavy package' where we take out the Wolf and have 2 DTs and 2 Bandits, especially since we're a bit undersized at Wolf right now.

There's going to be a TON to watch out for during the games to see how it all plays out!

 

[78Alum]

Great analysis as always, Jess! I always look forward to seeing your thoughts and am so excited to see what we look like this year.

 

[JessN]

interesting perspective. It's going to be fun watching how all this plays out, especially with these 'new' positions and how the roster fits into some slightly different roles.

Just wanted to mention that someone asked Wommack about it today and he mentioned Overton being able to slide inside occasionally. So yeah, they're still playing with their toys a bit.

 

[gtgilbert]

Just wanted to mention that someone asked Wommack about it today and he mentioned Overton being able to slide inside occasionally. So yeah, they're still playing with their toys a bit.

thanks for the info. I had not seen that. Him being versatile enough to play multiple roles and slide from 3 to 9 depending on what the D is trying to do should be very helpful. I wouldn't be shocked at all if we have sub-packages with him or other Bandits inside.