Alan,
One thing Shula could have done, clearly, was not weight the practice reps in such a way that Croyle got not just a majority, but virtually all of them. Not adequately preparing a backup quarterback for college football is at best, ill-advised. Considering what Alabama was facing with its OL going into this year, it was worse than ill-advised.
Well, Alabama reaped what it had sowed in practice. When I can be in the stands and literally be saying, out loud, "Do not throw that pass" three times, and the player throws it anyway resulting in three of UA's four interceptions, it points to a quarterback that doesn't know how to make his reads. Your own argument about Croyle, Pennington and Guillon being carbon copies of one another -- or your statement about Guillon's long football history -- only proves this point. If they're so close to each other in abilities, why are the results so different? Perhaps it's because the level of preparation was so different that the backups didn't have a grasp of what they were supposed to do.
Let's say, for argument's sake, that it is Guillon's fault -- either he isn't talented enough, or he doesn't have the capabilities to read the defense the way this offense demands he do it. At that point, it is the coaches' responsibility to design an offense around Guillon's skills, whatever they may be. Instead, after two full weeks of practice preparation and two games, our offense hasn't changed an inch.
You apparently want to put the responsibility on the players. That's no better than putting it on the coaches' shoulders, and arguably worse, considering one group of people is getting paid up to $1 million to come up with a solution and the other group is playing for an education. It's the players' responsibility to execute the game plan, but it's the coaches' responsibility to design a game plan the players are capable of executing, and then teach them how to do it.
Either way, for two weeks I've come very close in the game previews to the actual final scores, and gave you a very accurate description of what you were likely to see on game day -- unfortunately. Yet I seem to find myself in these threads anyway, defending what has proven to be true. And I'll tell you this -- if Alabama can't either change what it's doing to accommodate the reality of Croyle's injury, or somehow put the players left playing on a very accelerated learning curve, it's going to be a 50-50 proposition at best that Alabama will make the postseason, to say nothing of how UA will be treated against UT, LSU and Auburn.
