A reasonable Bama evaluation?

[quietfan 233]

Wow, a fairly objective appraisal on Tidefans!

http://www.tidefans.com/forums/showthread....7789&page=2

JessN

Administrator

I'm not trying to throw cold water on expectations, but Alabama will only win as many games as its defense will allow it to, and that will depend on how quickly we can integrate current players into the new scheme. UA will also be depending greatly on freshmen.

People have tried to say, "Oh, the new defense isn't that much different than the old one," when in actuality it couldn't get any more different if it tried. There isn't a single position on the field that is being taught the same way or that will have the same responsibilities. Zero. Not a single one.

If the defense jels quickly in the fall, the offense has enough talent to make some very good teams nervous. But putting on the darkest pair of crimson glasses I could find after A-Day, I could only make myself cautiously optimistic. Some of what I saw was just plain scary.

There are three or four key positions in this defense where we have zero or one available player who went through spring training -- nose tackle (Motley), left inside LB (Mustin), Jack/left outside linebacker (Knight) and free corner (M.Johnson; Castille, I feel, will end up on the boundary). Most contenders -- not teams, *contenders* -- have two or three people at each position.

Prince Hall also has to get accustomed to being a field signal-caller; we haven't had one of those in four years. Hall is a sophomore and is not yet a complete player by any stretch.

Of the problem spots, I think McClain will start ahead of Mustin, Motley will essentially split NT with two true freshmen (Chapman and McCullough), while Knight and Johnson will hold onto their spots.

This has not yet addressed our weakness at safety, where Marcus Carter has been little more than a placeholder for two years and Rashad Johnson isn't yet a complete safety. If Ricks qualifies, he'll almost certainly displace one of those guys, most likely Carter.

Therefore, you're talking about significant trouble at six of the 11 defensive positions, and we haven't even yet talked about how Keith Saunders, who ran close to a 5.0 forty at junior Pro Day last month, is going to handle OLB. The only thing that keeps me from listing that as a real trouble spot is because we have some depth there that looked OK in the spring (Waldrop, Higgenbotham).

Saban's first season at LSU was very rough around the edges, and I expect his first season here to be the same. Without trying to get too particular about which games are wins and which aren't -- because I'll bet we have one loss somewhere that no one is expecting, maybe an Ole Miss or a Vanderbilt -- I'd say 8-4 is the center of the bell curve, and it could be anywhere from 5-7 on the low side to 9-3 on the high side.

Probably one of the fairest evaluations I've heard from a Bama fan, IMO.

[DKW 86 7,424]

Kudos to Jess. He drinks as much kool-aid as anyone on occasion, but that was a very realistic eval. The difference in Kines and Saban-Steele is night and day with the D.

Saban and Muschamp run a very complicated Bill Oliver type of D based alot on Oliver himself. Muschamp worked for Oliver at It has very complicated reads etc. The pros in Miami were gald Saban took his D with him btw. They never got it all in two years.

Kines is a very much "stay-at-home" and play very disciplined ball. Saban attacks much more. Kines reacts more.

Truthfully, I was hoping no one would notice about the difference in the Ds. It would be fun to watch the fans react to the inevitable flubs. We had several last year with CWM implementing his reads last year. Those reactions need to be practiced and not thought about before reacting. That takes time.

[townhallsavoy 2]

Tell JessN that it's "gels" not "jels."

[quietfan 233]

Truthfully, I was hoping no one would notice about the difference in the Ds. It would be fun to watch the fans react to the inevitable flubs.

Yeah, it was kind of a shame to let the cat out of the bag. This could have been a lot of fun in the fall! I'm sure it will still be entertaining even if it's not a surprize, though!

[BAMMERPERRY 0]

I've never had a worse case of jock itch than I do right now.

[SouthLink02 8]

Very good write-up.

Saban's D lives and dies by the blitz and as Jess put it...even the most experienced LSWho teams with Saban got killed at times.

It takes a LONG TIME to know Saban's system and many kids who were 2-3 years into Saban's system STILL had a hard time putting it together.

One can have up to 9 things to know when a QB gets under center....

It's very complex

[DKW 86 7,424]

Truthfully, I was hoping no one would notice about the difference in the Ds. It would be fun to watch the fans react to the inevitable flubs.

Yeah, it was kind of a shame to let the cat out of the bag. This could have been a lot of fun in the fall! I'm sure it will still be entertaining even if it's not a surprize, though!

Flubs I mentioned were especially evident in the game. We were in a blitz mode when audibled into the qb draw over and over. They ate us up with it all game. Next season, 2007, we should far more wiser running the D.

I swear, during the game last year, you knew where was going to run just by our alignment scheme. It was that obvious about 20% of the time. It killed every one of those times too.