JessN: Arkansas wrap-up: Bama wins big, but leaves for home with lots to fix

[JessN]

Arkansas wrap-up: Bama wins big, but leaves for home with lots to fix
by Jess Nicholas
TideFans Editor-In-Chief
October 6th, 2018 10:49 PM

One of the great challenges of watching the 2018 Alabama football team play is convincing people that when the offense, directed by Tua Tagovailoa, is capable of scoring points at will, there remain significant areas of concern that could affect Bama's march back to the college football title game.

The well-worn story of placekicking woes has almost reached meme status, and even though every kicking situation this year will be accompanied by rosary beads, lucky ballcaps turned backwards and whatnot, the kicking game looks like a much lesser of several evils coming out of Bama's 65-31 win over Arkansas.[…]

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[Jkl0802]

Great analysis and good read Jess. Thanks again for all you do for Alabama fans!

 

[bamablood6]

Yea defense needs a lot of work and I am not sure Lupoi and Golding can handle it. Lack of depth at ILB dont help but it seems the ones they have arent being mentally coached up. Both Wilson and Moses have digressed since last year IMO.

 

[GrayTide]

Thanks, Jess always appreciate your time and talent. I stand by my comment in the post game thread, the defense we saw on the field in Fayetteville yesterday will not win us another NC, plain and simple. Drew Lock is a better passer and has better receivers than Arkansas so it could get tense in BDS. I hope we have not transitioned into a run and gun offense at the expense of the defense and special teams, but it kinda looks that way right now.

 

[B1GTide]

Thanks for the effort, but the doom and gloom after a single poor game is puzzling. Literally every fan in America would love to have your problems.

 

[Redwood Forrest]

Thanks for pointing out what many are ignoring and trying making excuses for. Honesty is the best policy.

 

[Redwood Forrest]

Thanks, Jess always appreciate your time and talent. I stand by my comment in the post game thread, the defense we saw on the field in Fayetteville yesterday will not win us another NC, plain and simple. Drew Lock is a better passer and has better receivers than Arkansas so it could get tense in BDS. I hope we have not transitioned into a run and gun offense at the expense of the defense and special teams, but it kinda looks that way right now.

I agree and I said in another thread we have become Baylor ~ and I hate Baylor ball.

 

[GrayTide]

B1G, I don't think it is doom and gloom from most fans, but rather the realization that for whatever reason, youth, inexperience, coaching turnover on defense, the players look confused and out of position. Not taking anything away from Arkansas but they are not a very good team and yet they pretty much had their way with our defense. Yes, it is fixable and it needs to happen before we head to Baton Rouge, but I still feel the defense has regressed, or at best has not improved.

 

[TideEngineer08]

If this ends up being the worst defense of the Nick Saban era, yet we still win the NC because we have the best offense in the country, are we still going to be complaining when it’s over?

No team is perfect and I agree we’ve got some pretty big and unusual problems on defense. But unless something catastrophic happens on the other side of the ball, we aren’t losing. And that’s the case with every team, no matter how good they are.

No I’m not a big fan of the Big 12 style and I’m also not sure I would classify us as such quite yet. I don’t think our defense is that bad or that untended. And I think our offense is far better than that of the typical Big 12 team. I do worry about the LBs and whatever is going on with the seeming lack of adjustments. But when the offense can score 50+ without breaking a sweat, when the starting QB has yet to play a single 4th quarter snap, it’s just hard to be that worried. And that’s the other thing. If we managed playing time like a big 12 offense did, we’d be averaging 84 pts a game.

 

[CajunCrimson]

I blame the defensive issue somewhat on Tua. Our TOP is horrible. Simply because we are scoring so quickly. We have little depth and they are back on the field in just minutes, sometimes in seconds.

I guess my point is. With this O, the D is going to get gassed quickly.

 

[uafan4life]

I disagree on your point about the receivers; it's a very easy choice.

The only way I'd trade our receivers for the Ole Miss bunch right now is with a gun to my head - and maybe not even then.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[rgw]

Thanks for the effort, but the doom and gloom after a single poor game is puzzling. Literally every fan in America would love to have your problems.

The thing is that a lot of the problems we are all "inspecting" right now are inevitably the things that leads to us losing when the rest of the nation is billing us as unbeatable. I've seen this story too many times to buy "new unstoppable offense will just gloss over defense with liabilities" because that was the storyline in 2010, 2013, and to a lesser extent 2014 until the liabilities got too big and the offense proved a bit more stoppable than people thought.

 

[CrimsonProf]

B1G, I don't think it is doom and gloom from most fans, but rather the realization that for whatever reason, youth, inexperience, coaching turnover on defense, the players look confused and out of position. Not taking anything away from Arkansas but they are not a very good team and yet they pretty much had their way with our defense. Yes, it is fixable and it needs to happen before we head to Baton Rouge, but I still feel the defense has regressed, or at best has not improved.

Two touchdowns against the starters while we gave them multiple drives thanks to an incredible offense is hardly "had their way."

Look, I'm concerned that we could be exploited by Missouri, State and possibly even Auburn, to say nothing of OSU or Clemson, but we've had one "bad" showing.

 

[Saban4Ever]

Nice write up. I agree on your assessment. Kicking/Punting/Defense need to improve before LSU. LSU, Miss State, and Auburn will all improve by the time Bama plays them.

I am sure Saban sees all the problems on defense that you mentioned, plus more. I think it is a combination of the play calling, coaching, tackling, communication, and experience.

I am not sold yet on Tosh, but defense should be improving each game, not regressing. Saban needs to make all the calls on defense. I miss Jeremy Pruitt. I bet he misses Bama too (thought I understand he wanted a head coaching job and he has to start somewhere).

 

[CaliforniaTide]

The defensive issues are concerning, but at the half, Alabama had only allowed 14 points with the starters in. I agree with Jess that Alabama's starters are above just about everyone else; it's the depth that isn't playing well for a lot of reasons. Mack in particular is easily baited. Clearly whatever teaching/coaching is taking place during the week by Lupoi/Golding isn't quite working; maybe a part of that is related to their relative inexperience - Lupoi as DC, and Golding at an elite football program. I trust CNS will get it "figured out" at least to try to manage it, but typically how you play in game 6 of the season is an indicator of how you'll keep playing the rest of the season.

I would interested to see how the offense's success on the field is impacting the defense's ability to rest, meet, etc. on the sideline. It's a catch-22, and I'd agree with rgw's comment that it could turn into the facade of "Awesome offense defeats average defense all the time!"

 

[CrimsonNagus]

Weren’t the last 2 TDs given up by the 3rd string guys? It’s not like we are going to play those guys in a somewhat close game so, I’m not sure what all the worrying is about. After watching LSU, State and AU yesterday, none of those offenses worry me and none of them have the defense to completely slow down our offense. At this point, outside of a poor performance, I don’t see any regular season game that will be within 2 TDs entering the 4th. Does the defense have some things to fix, yes, especially when the 3rd string is in but, it’s not like we have a bad defense. And a good enough defense is probably all we need this year.

 

[CrimsonNagus]

LSU, Miss State, and Auburn will all improve by the time Bama plays them.

Did you guys watch their games yesterday? What are y’all seeing that I don’t because those teams don’t scare me at all. None of those offenses are that good and AU’s is downright horrible. UF’s defense is mediocre at best and they still beat LSU. I just don’t see what some of you are seeing in these teams.

 

[ROTYDE]

Thanks, Jess great analysis of the game. It kind of reminds me of the West coast teams and offenses years ago that were putting up lots of numbers offensively and giving up numbers defensively. Hopefully our young D will come together and figure out a solution to the middle of the field problems.

 

[rgw]

The inside backers and safeties get lost in the sauce more than normal (even for an inexperienced unit under Saban) and overall tackling/angle issues are the serious problems. Depth fall off is serious but still secondary to the starter concerns at the midpoint of the season. Could be that this is a rare situation where the defense has to catch up to the offense by November. It has often been the other way but I'll tell you the acrimony was still there. We're giving up a lot of yards and explosive plays WITH THE STARTERS playing and it almost always comes down to poor angles, missed tackles, and miscommunication. The miscommunication probably feeds into the poor angles and missed tackles. We're giving up yards AND points with the backups.

We straight up can't get a stop consistently once the starters begin checking out group by group. This is also not something so stark in past seasons. Most noticeably, when the front line DL goes out it usually is a sign of things going downhill quick. The big guys are basically the only really great thing about this defense right now. Thompson is a ballhawk but we're beginning to see that he's a big risk taker and gets nosey in ways that can be exploited by even mediocre quarterbacks.

Granted, we are playing a lot more garbage time than we normally do but truly not much more than in 2017 especially at the same point in each season. This unit just isn't up to the standard. I don't buy that the offense is good enough to make it unimportant because the standard is not Arkansas and Aggy but instead Clemson, Georgia, and Ohio State. If we aren't measuring up to those cats. If I worry that they could exploit our defense well enough to keep our offense off the field and beat us. Then we are not good enough and I will levy the complaints.

 

[TideEngineer08]

The thing is that a lot of the problems we are all "inspecting" right now are inevitably the things that leads to us losing when the rest of the nation is billing us as unbeatable. I've seen this story too many times to buy "new unstoppable offense will just gloss over defense with liabilities" because that was the storyline in 2010, 2013, and to a lesser extent 2014 until the liabilities got too big and the offense proved a bit more stoppable than people thought.

I find it a bit offensive to compare this year's offense to any of those, or anything Alabama has put on the field since maybe 1973.