Overall I still found a lot of positives about this game for Bama.
Our premise for this season has been that our first team may be as good as anybodies' in the league (at least the division), but 2nd-3rd is still extremely young or not as talented as other team's. When our strength on offense is our O line and in essence we lose 3 starters with 2 out with injuries and Mike Johnson moving from where he is a strength at guard, to a weakness at LT, its going to effect the offense terribly. To add to that, I think we came out with a gameplan that said we were going to treat this game like a practice and see if we can throw and implement new wrinkles in it instead of going the ball control route of last week (which is an offense I expect to come out with against all the big time competition). Well Tulane was able to exploit the offensive line and put big time pressure on JP early and often and sack him 4 times (all unavoidable IMO by him).
As for the positives. I'd say one was JP. It sucked that he missed that TD to Julio by not leading him inside. However, last 2 years this would've been a game that would've had me seeking out JP on campus and getting dragged away by campus police. Tulane played physical and well defensively and got to him in the backfield. But JP didn't force anything, he ate the ball when he had to, threw it away when he had to, and didn't turn the ball over trying to make a play when he was under duress. And he still made some good throws to help move the offense.
Another positive is it still looks like we have a great running game. We just didn't go to it enough. In spite of our injuries at O line and Tulane playing surprisingly good defensively both of our running backs were highly efficient on the ground. Both Ingram and Coffee were close to 6 yards per carry with only 11 and 9 carries apiece respectively. I think our staff will be smart going forward and rush the ball down everyone's throats. Even though I still want to see what we have when we're throwing it at full strength.
Another strength, our special teams look great and well...special (though we may need to take a look at our kickoff coverage). Javier is a kickass returner. Tiffin has looked good so far and did last year. And we were able to put some pressure on their fg attempts up the middle.
Biggest positive= our defense. I mean they basically doubled us in plays with 82. And their QB was actually making great throws and buying time, yet we gave up 6 points. 3 of which were given up to 2 BS penalties. When I said we don't have depth, yeah we thought that went towards the defense too, but Im not so sure that it does (save maybe 2 spots at LB). The DBs are deep, the DL is deep. I think Reamer and Chavis are very strong at SLB and we will be very strong at MLB with Rolando and Prince. However, Fanney has been a surprise at Jack and is actually making plays not just being a solid contributor and not screwing up. That was something I was worried about coming into the season, and he's been great. Reamer has obviously been a playmaker as well, which is a great surprise. Pretty much we don't have the weakness at LB as projected. Our biggest weakness may be Donta in coverage and that's not really a major weakness. If it had been last 2 year's depth and last 2 year's conditioning, our defense would've allowed Tulane to look like great defensively by the 2nd half. They were on the field all game (ala 2005) and they were stout (ala 2005)
The reason Im not so down on our offense is for 2 reasons. 1. I know we aren't that bad offensively. Not even close. Simple case of poor gameplanning, poor focus, staff trying to implement new wrinkles in an offense as if its practice and chose the wrong game due to Tulane's tenacity and the lack of OL. 2nd. I think its quite possible that our defense is going to hold even some of our top competition down to single digits or close.
