Game notes: UT vs Bama

[hscoach]

First: I want to congratulate the Bama coaches and players on the win.  The players were well prepared for the game.  It seemed to me the Bama players took a very businesslike attitude in this game. 

Offense:   The offense quietly put together 482 yards of offense.  They only had 3 negative plays all game.  Two were tackles for losses and the other the big fumble by Drake at the goal line.  They had 2 plays of 10+ yards.  However a couple of them were negated by a penalty and a fumble.  Drake led the rushing with 4 running plays for 10+ yards, but as I said he fumbled and negated one of them.  Yeldon, Jones, and Henry all had one each.  There were 13 pass plays for 10+ yards, one of which was negated by a penalty.  Norwood led the way with 6 of these plays followed by Cooper with 3, one negated by penalty, 2 by White and 1 each by Yeldon and Drake.  They only a couple of three and outs and one was near the end of the game with the backups in. Bama put together a 98 yard drive for a TD to go along with 51, 66, 66, 82 as well as a 71 yard drive that ended in a FG.  In the red zone Bama scored on 4 out of 5 trips, three TD’s and 1 FG.  They had 2 scores that came from outside the red zone a TD pass to Norwood and another to Cooper. I have noticed Bama likes to show the passing formation in the red zone and run a delay/draw in this area and it has been successful.  The negative for the offense was the wasted field position on their opening 2nd half kickoff return that put them on the 43 going in and hurt themselves with penalties and ended up punting.  Also, Bama was 7/11 on third down conversions.

QB:   Played a good game and made good decisions.  He completed 70% of his passes and if Drake and Jones don’t drop two it jumps to 78%.  He did miss a throw on what would have been a TD to Cooper.  Also, Norwood bailed him out on the catch near the goal line. 

RB:   They ran hard.  Combined they ran for 161 yards and averaged 5.5 yards per carry.  They both blocked well and caught the ball out of the backfield.  Drake did have a drop, but I really think he was expecting AJ to run and probably wasn’t expecting the ball.

REC:  I have said this before and will say it every game if notice it.  The rec’s do a good job catching the ball with their hands and not letting the ball get into their body.  There were three great examples in the game.  The examples are, first, the catch by Norwood, and 2 by Cooper, one on the slant and the other on the sideline. 

OL:   They did a good job.  They were very few times contact was made in the backfield.  Most of the day AJ had time to throw, but coverage caused him to scramble.  There were only a couple of occasions I thought the left guard came off his block and took the wrong man, and they didn’t sustain their blocks long enough which allowed only a short gain. 

Defense:  The defense played pretty well.  They only had 2 three and outs along with 5 negative plays.  Three of these were tackles for losses and 2 were ints.  One of the ints was taken back for a TD by Collins. I have the D giving up 6 pass plays for 10+yards and 2 running plays for 10+ yards.  They gave up a total of 322 yards total offense.  Of these yards 148 came on 4 plays as they gave up a run for 43, and passes of 43, 38, and 24 yards.  It looked like there was a busted coverage on one of the plays.  Two of the plays were the same crossing routed thrown to the back side.   I do wonder what is considered the Rabbit package they use to use when they would put Hightower down in a three point stance at the D end position.

DL:   They played well again keeping the OL off the LBs.  One thing I want people to notice is the way Pagan was running on the int and made the last block to get Collins in the end zone.  Remember he was a rec in the beginning of his high school career. 

LB:  I thought Depriest played well.  He did a good job on the reverse as well as the zone read.  They probably didn’t do a lot of practicing on that without knowing the backup QB was that type of player.  CJ did well, but was not as noticeable in this game.  One thing I did pick up on was him getting on a DB for what I assume was not getting off the block fast enough.

DB:   They played pretty well.  Both Collins and HaHa came up and tackled well.  Colllins had a pick and HaHa was close.  They were a few pass break ups.  The long pass right before the half was good coverage the ball was just underthrown and the rec made a play on it.  It actually looked like the DB’s may have lost the ball in the sun. 

Penalties: The penalties hurt on the first dive in the 2nd half.  All others were overcome.  I thought that 2 were bad calls.  First, the pass interference on Cooper was bad because the DB had his hand on Cooper also.  The second was the roughing the passes.  I never really saw any contact from the Bama player. 

Special teams: It took UT 3 ½ quarter, but they finally figured out not to kick the ball to Jones.  I honestly think I could figure that out watching film.  Jones gave Bama great field position on two kickoff returns and they only capitalized on one.  I guess I jinxed the kick off cover team with my thread on is this the best specials teams Bama has ever had. 

Finally:  There were a few missed tackles on special teams and the defense.  The offense wasted field position.   Overall a pretty good game and game plan by Bama.   
Please feel free to comment.

Good Luck and Roll Tide Roll 
15 and counting

[hscoach]

One thing I left off.  I was really surprised Kelly started and played most of the day at center as well as Lindsay has been playing. 

[Catch Prothro]

I think you are right about the DBs missing the ball in the sun on that one play.  It was right in their eyes then.

Watching the game live, it seemed there were several occasions where TN had a receiver or especially a TE open, but the QB didn't see it or missed the throw.  I'm wondering if we might miss Sunseri against a better passing team.

[SUPERCOACH]

I thought the fumble by Drake was the result of being selfish.  There is no reason to try to stick the ball out over the goal line like that unless it is 4th and goal, or in some cases 3rd and goal if you need a TD to take the lead late in the game.  The only reason to do that is so that you can get credit for the TD instead of one of your teammates who will most likely punch it in on the next play.  He has done that several times this year.  Many times he gets away with it without fumbling, but the risk is too high unless the game situation is desperate.  Maybe, just maybe, he has finally learned his lesson about SECURING THE FOOTBALL!

[Catch Prothro]

I thought the fumble by Drake was the result of being selfish.  There is no reason to try to stick the ball out over the goal line like that unless it is 4th and goal, or in some cases 3rd and goal if you need a TD to take the lead late in the game.  The only reason to do that is so that you can get credit for the TD instead of one of your teammates who will most likely punch it in on the next play.  He has done that several times this year.  Many times he gets away with it without fumbling, but the risk is too high unless the game situation is desperate.  Maybe, just maybe, he has finally learned his lesson about SECURING THE FOOTBALL!

You're correct.  Yeldon has fumbled a few times on the goal line too.  Maybe that needs to be a point of emphasis in practice.

[hscoach]

I thought the fumble by Drake was the result of being selfish.  There is no reason to try to stick the ball out over the goal line like that unless it is 4th and goal, or in some cases 3rd and goal if you need a TD to take the lead late in the game.  The only reason to do that is so that you can get credit for the TD instead of one of your teammates who will most likely punch it in on the next play.  He has done that several times this year.  Many times he gets away with it without fumbling, but the risk is too high unless the game situation is desperate.  Maybe, just maybe, he has finally learned his lesson about SECURING THE FOOTBALL!

I am not convinced he wasn't changing hands with the ball to get it away from the contact.  That being said it was a hustle play which is hard to complain about.

[SUPERCOACH]

I thought the fumble by Drake was the result of being selfish.  There is no reason to try to stick the ball out over the goal line like that unless it is 4th and goal, or in some cases 3rd and goal if you need a TD to take the lead late in the game.  The only reason to do that is so that you can get credit for the TD instead of one of your teammates who will most likely punch it in on the next play.  He has done that several times this year.  Many times he gets away with it without fumbling, but the risk is too high unless the game situation is desperate.  Maybe, just maybe, he has finally learned his lesson about SECURING THE FOOTBALL!

I am not convinced he wasn't changing hands with the ball to get it away from the contact.  That being said it was a hustle play which is hard to complain about.

His M.O. is to stick the ball out over the goal line.  He does it all the time.  Regardless of whether he was trying to do it this time, I want to see him stop doing that.  Now he has AJ doing it too.  AJ also lost the ball but they said his knee was down first.

[Old Tider]

What should we make of the 10-10 score in the second half? It didn't look like Bama was holding back.

[hscoach]

They self destructed on the 1st drive of the second quarter.  They did use a lot of clock and finished with the backups.  Bama started subbing the backups on defense earlier than the offense.

[lstephen]

Great notes coach!  I noticed Pagan blocking on the int return, too, but had forgotten about his receiver background.  I like his hustle.  Whatever the cause we really need to learn to put the ball away.  Way too many fumbles!

[lstephen]

Also, I thought Liner did pretty well in his first outing.

[2Stater]

I thought Drake was trying to switch hands with the ball to extend into the end zone. He would have walked in untouched.

UT did us several favors by screwing up pass plays that should have been completed. I think we are, indeed, missing Vinnie.

Having said that, we played well enough to beat most everybody in the country. We have a bye week and I think we are ready for LSU.

[ricky023]

I thought the fumble by Drake was the result of being selfish.  There is no reason to try to stick the ball out over the goal line like that unless it is 4th and goal, or in some cases 3rd and goal if you need a TD to take the lead late in the game.  The only reason to do that is so that you can get credit for the TD instead of one of your teammates who will most likely punch it in on the next play.  He has done that several times this year.  Many times he gets away with it without fumbling, but the risk is too high unless the game situation is desperate.  Maybe, just maybe, he has finally learned his lesson about SECURING THE FOOTBALL!

I am not convinced he wasn't changing hands with the ball to get it away from the contact.  That being said it was a hustle play which is hard to complain about.

His M.O. is to stick the ball out over the goal line.  He does it all the time.  Regardless of whether he was trying to do it this time, I want to see him stop doing that.  Now he has AJ doing it too.  AJ also lost the ball but they said his knee was down first.

This something I was really worried about yesterday. I think Drake can be a great player but if you run 99 yards and fumble what have you done? Nothing. They have gloves. Can they not have some glue on those gloves so Drake can quit fumbling? I really go nuts when I see TJ fumbling. It is like the FLU everybody catches it and wants to fumble more than the next guy. RTR!

[Jamos]

Good job coach. I agree with some of the posters about dropped passes and fumbles, Bama has been lucky so far that they weren't playing catch up football when these things happen, but if it continues it's gonna bite them in the rear end.

It didn't take long to see how valuable Sunseri was to the kicking teams.

It was a good win though, proud of them.

[SeniorTSM]

OK hscoach, do you have an early scouting report on LSU?

Only concern i have is the short throws like they did to us last year. seemed no matter what we could not stop that. they have some big RB's but Bama is pretty good against the run and their OL is not as good as last year.

just my two cent....yall fell free to tell me im wrong

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