Week 3 Game Analysis: Ole Miss

[theSabanator20]

QB- So obviously, we haven't decided who our complete starter is yet. I saw Coker make some crucial plays with his feet that kept plays and drives alive, and I saw him hit some tough passes to the outside. He did miss a lot of deep throws, and threw some bonehead INTs as well, even though the last one was on Stewart, which I'll explain later. Bateman, shit, he's good for a package QB, but he isn't making huge plays or anything. He only really messed up once on an INT, and then got took out. So I guess that was his chance.

RB- Drake wasn't used as much in the passing game as I expected him to be. Henry, again, had a great night. Slow start for Henry, but he starting running angry late when we needed him. I think we're still fine here. I do believe we should have tried Drake to the outside more instead of running Henry outside. That bumfundled me.

WR- Oh, boy, where to start. I think Foster is out for the year, he was in serious pain and couldn't move his arm by himself when he left the field. He never came back i I hope he's able to come back, he was our best receiver by far. Mullaney had a breakout game, with 2 TDs. I saw flashes of brilliance, but I also saw a lot of youth mistakes. Multiple deep balls where our receivers didn't have their heads turned. Several dropped passes undeterred. Simple stuff that absolutely cannot happen. Talent wise, we are fine here, but fundamentally, we need some work. Credit to Ole Miss, they do have a pretty good defense. The last INT was on Stewart, once you run 15 yds down field you got to have your head around. That INT throw was 30 yds down the field and Stewart wasn't even looking for the ball yet. Coker was expecting him to be, which is why it looked somewhat under thrown.

TE- I'm pretty sure OJ is our only TE, and he had a good game, so I'm not gonna say much here.

OL- I wish we would stop pinch blocking out of the Shotgun when we run the dives to Henry. We keep leaving an OLB unblocked and Henry gets hit in the backfield to often. I like the getoff we have on belly runs, and being aggressive in pass blocking. We have been surprisingly good pass blocking, considering we don't have a mobile QB to bail us out to make our OLine look better. We still do need to improve though.

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DL- what can I say, we really didn't have too much of a pass rush, if any. We did do great against the run, I mean shit look at stats all you want but when the offense keeps turning the ball over, there's not much more you can do. Still think we're fine here.

LB- played the gaps well, but did get beat outside a couple times. Gotta work on perimeter runs. Other than that, I think we're fine.

Secondary- alright, so it may seem like they did awful, but we did have two absolute bullshit plays happen to us in this game. Discipline or no discipline, both plays came straight out the Backyard playbook. We never got beat deep that I can recall, unless you wanna call a 20 yd fade deep. But we did have some major drawbacks, such as not getting our heads around, and I think most of the night we went man, so obviously we would be a little more suspect there.

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ST- geeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzz whyyyyyyyyyyy ...... Okay, Griffith made a FG. That's a plus. JK Scott punted well. Our Kick coverage was good..................... But FUCKING WOW TWO FUCKING FUMBLES IN A FUCKING ROW ON KICK RETURNS OH MY FUCKING SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On a good note, we recovered what might be the most beautiful onside kick I've ever seen. But yeah, two special teams mistakes fucked us from the start. Fuck you Bobby Williams.

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Intagibles- well obviously, this team has heart. People were leaving the stadium. We were down by 19+ TWICE in this game, and I guarantee you that absolutely no one else in the country would have had a chance to win the game under those circumstances with FIVE MOTHERFUCKING TURNOVERS. I believe if we can fix the small things, we still have a chance.

Coaching- sometimes I wanna kill Kiffin. Other times I'm glad we have him. But damn, when you can run the ball, KEEP DOING IT. Congrats to Scott Cochran on being the best coach on our staff. He kept us in the game tonight. Thank God we still have him.

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Overall Assessment:

QB- C+
RB- A-
WR- B-
TE- A
OL- A-

DL- A
LB- A-
Secondary- A-

ST- B-

This is a great game to sit down and watch film on. Lots of positives, lots of negatives. But we are a resilient team. Just didn't really deserve to win tonight. I still think we have a great team, and no doubt Ole Miss as of right now is the best team in the country. No dispute in my opinion.

 

[bamafan4evr12]

Good analysis! I agree with most everything you said. Bateman didn't instill any excitement in the offense but he also didn't do much to hurt us. His INT seemed more like a communication error with the receiver than a boneheaded throw.

Coker, oh Lord. I have never seen a more bipolar QB in my life. He did some things well but then the next play he throws a ball that Aaron Rodgers would never complete. His interception late that was meant for Stewart, yes wtf was Stewart doing? Turn your head kid. But its on Coker just as much, he's getting pressure by a DLmen and he throws up a prayer. Watch some of the best QBs out there, most of the times in these situations they throw it in the dirt at a linemans feet. Live to fight another day.

The defense, wow. I thought with the situations they were put in they did as well as you could hope for. At halftime Ole Miss had less than 100 yards of offense and 17 points. Doesn't help when your offense puts you in situations where your room for error is next to nothing. The lucky bounce on the first drive of the second half, not a lot you can do about that. Ole Miss just got lucky on that.

I liked the way we fought though. They could've given up, but they didn't. I think they realized that without their mistakes they win this game. 5 TOs and you still have a chance to win it with just about everything going against you. If we fix the TO situation, I think we will be fine. I thought the coaches did pretty well, there were a couple moments I thought WTF are you thinking Kiffin. But maybe this takes some pressure off all the players and coaches and we can just go out and play.

 

[Mistaken4193]

The 43 points wasnt on the defense. At least 30 of those points were because of turnovers and the 2 bullshit TDs by Ole Miss's offense

 

[theSabanator20]

The 43 points wasnt on the defense. At least 30 of those points were because of turnovers and the 2 bullshit TDs by Ole Miss's offense

Exactly. But as you know, fans on the outside will only see this:

Chad Kelly, 300+ yds, 3 TDs.

 

[bamafan4evr12]

Exactly. But as you know, fans on the outside will only see this:

Chad Kelly, 300+ yds, 3 TDs.

An illegal play resulted in a good chunk of those yards and one of those TDs. A lucky bounce and catch resulted in another good chunk of yards and a TD.

I honestly think had our offense/ST screwed us with TOs then this game and these stats look much differently. But it just didn't happen that way. Its unfortunate, but it happens.

 

[4down20]

I blame the coaching for this loss 100%.

I also blame them for the current QB situation.

I may go into more later on the reasons why. But I am currently very unhappy with both Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin.

 

[bamabear82]

I blame the coaching for this loss 100%.

I also blame them for the current QB situation.

I may go into more later on the reasons why. But I am currently very unhappy with both Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin.

Word. Trying to get cute's not gonna cut it, that's not what we do. It's like Saban's been trying to out coach himself the last 2 years.

 

[4down20]

A'ight, here we go. Gonna be a long one.

First, I am pretty upset with Kiffin and Saban over the QB situation. It's been clear as day since the first game that Coker is our best QB. He has the most playing time, he has looked the best, he's always taken first team reps.

It makes no sense what so ever that we would start the other QB in what may be the biggest game of the year. You just don't fucking do that. And it's nothing you should ever expect from a coaching making 7 million a year. I was melting before the game even started over this because it violates basically every common sense thing I've ever known when it comes to your QB.

Coker isn't perfect, but he makes plays and drives the football. Bateman gets higher % in completions etc, but his stuff is all short passes. He averages way less per pass. When it's 3rd and more because Kiffin was stupid and ran a WR sweep or tried a deep ball and didn't run Henry, Coker is the one you need back there. He is the one that with time is usually able to hit the open guy and carve a defense up. He did it against Wisconsin, he did it last night.

And this whole issue really goes beyond just this one game. Because they are wasting time for 3 weeks now doing what? Makes 2 completely different game plans for each player, rather than focusing on the 1 guy and spending the most time towards making him a success.

Not only that, but when it comes to rep times and getting QB's ready for a game, they have to split time evenly between the guys rather than focusing on just the 1 guy and giving him all the reps with your backup getting reps and such, but in a much more limited manner. If we started Bateman it's pretty damn obvious where Kiffin spent the majority of the gameplan - although that sucked as well. Then we are left with Coker having to try and make up a loss while getting less reps than he should have in practice and less attention he should have in prep.

Less rhythm with receivers, less time with them, etc.

It's dumb. Just fucking dumb and it's ridiculous that a coach of Saban's caliber isn't making the call 3 fucking weeks ago. There is just no excuse for it. You make these decisions long before big games for actual reasons that matter.

It's been rumored that Kiffin wants Bateman and Saban wants Coker. Which I think could be true because it seems to playout that way on the field. Well if that's true, it's about fucking time Saban remembers - you are the fucking head coach, not him. You are the one we pay $7 million a year to make these decisions, not him. Do your fucking job and do what you knew was the right call all along.

And while you are putting Kiffin in his place and letting him know he is just an OC, make sure he never again calls a fucking WR sweep on 2nd a goal again. You do not run a play that features a back running 5 yards behind the fucking line of scrimmage the length of the field when you are on the goal line with a RB like Henry and a defense that struggles to stop him. Our pass blocking has lacked at times, but our run blocking has been decent. Henry got to the 1 yard line the next play, maybe if we didn't have that loss the play before we walk away with 7 rather than 3. Are you fucking retarded? And if that is not a clue that you need to do something Saban, then what the fuck is?

If Saban doesn't take control then he is not the coach I thought he was. He is not worth $7 million a year doing this kind of bullshit. It's just 1 game, so I'm not saying fire Saban or anything, but he better start to recognize his fuck up or it's going to be more than just 1 game.

Every QB in the country is probably looking at Alabama like - "fuck that shit" right about now.

I know everyone is saying you can't turn it over 5 times and expect to win. I agree and will address that, but we still could have won. We had the talent to overcome and the coaches let them down. The defense did better than people are giving them credit for and gave us the ball back twice at the end and gave Kiffin the chance to win the game.

I'll make another post to talk about the team, I had to rant about the coaching and it needed it's own post.

 

[4down20]

The team overall I thought did well. Except for the turnovers, we did better than I expected. There was a time when I thought maybe they had given up, but they jumped right back up and fought back. Over and over they fought back.

Defense:

I believe our secondary is actually improved over last year despite what everyone else is saying. Maybe I'm the dumbass, I don't know but overall they seem better to me this year. Some plays are going to happen, and the dink and dunk stuff Saban will probably give up most of the time. I'm not much of an X's and O's guy, but it seems like it's our LB's that are having trouble in coverage. We have all the special packages to put DB's in those positions, but when they aren't in, it seems like teams are taking advantage of them. When they are in, we give the QB too much time.

Like when we went against Wisconsin, they kept bring out the RB from the backfield and I think it was mostly Foster that was trying to deal with him. And then some of those passes over the middle beyond the LOS I think are usually the area of the LB's. I'm not an X's and O's guy as I said, but that's just what it seems like to me.

They aren't perfect, but nobody has a perfect secondary. They are WAY above average and I can't really think of a secondary I'd like to switch with on another team - unless we are talking about 3rd and longs. And to me that has to be on the coaches, you don't execute like crazy on every other situation and then not in that one.

The line is nasty. Nobody will run up the middle on us. Edges seem vulnerable, but I can only guess that's a matter of what's being called. Don't really pay attention to LB's that much, but I don't see any obvious lack of speed in them DePriest style.

Overall it's a great defense and the score doesn't do them justice. I think they did great, and at the end of the game when things matter the most they got us the ball back multiple times to try and amount a comeback.

Offense:

Coker is the obvious starter and has been. The kid has heart and made plays when it matter and tried to pick the teams up. As mentioned with the coaching, the coaching has failed this kid miserably. He needs to improve and they need to take the deep ball away for awhile because the WR are not getting separation.

You gotta burn someone on a awesome route Amari style, or get them to bite on the play action to get that seperation. Which requires running the ball up the middle, rather than WR sweeps and other bullshit plays.

OJ showing up this year, and the RB's are as good as always. These positions are are locked down at running championship form.

The O-line is not as good as years past, needs work. Seems to be better rushing rather than passing, but it's not like they are a line we can't win with.

Special Teams: I don't blame Bobby Williams for fumbles even though it would be nice. JK Scott seemed to perform well and nailed the few punts he was given. Griffith made his FG up close, but they also didn't have the confidence they had in him or what Saban claims. There were FG's we could have taken and didn't if we had a kicker back there. Our "4th down territory" is much larger this year than it should be. Overall it was an improved effort and I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

Can't have those kind of turnovers and we didn't get any from Ole Miss either. Ultimately that was probably the biggest deal, but I think we could have overcame them with a bit better coaching.

 

[4down20]

TLDR for both:

Saban needs to kick Kiffins ass and take control of things. The team is fine and has the talent to go all the way if they coaches do a better job and quit out coaching themselves.

 

[bamabear82]

Pretty much nailed it, 420.

 

[Mistaken4193]

Well said 4d20, my thoughts exactly.

 

[Bandwagonbo2]

Pretty much nailed it, 420.

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I agree though, 4d20 nailed his analysis of the issues.