Crimson Red Sports

Is it just me or did we do almost none of this? Seems like we either ran up the gut or threw to the wide outs. Hiding our cards? No faith in the TEs? Not enough time for the plays to develop given the poor pocket protection? Were we overconfident in our long-play weapons?

There were very few short crossing routes or flair out passes. Seems like we did a lot of that last year.

The offense was very vanilla, in my opinion, which is why (I hope) we were "holding our cards".
Even so, we certainly have much work to do with the O line.

A couple of screens were taken away by Tech. They knocked Yeldon off or grabbed him. I think the TEs stayed in to block on some throws. AJ said they threw stuff at them that they had not seen. The offense was very plain.

Definitely vanilla.  The announcers said Bama was being stubborn with the run, but I think at that point we were still just trying to establish an identity.

I expect more short passes and screens in two weeks, especially with the O-Line issues.  Bama's identity might not include knocking everyone off the ball this year -- heaven forbid we have to go to the spread.   :o

I felt like Christian Jones set the tone for Bama in his first return for a TD.  Had he not scored then our offense might have come out a bit more aggressive.  Maybe not.  Once we got that score, and our defense was lights out, I felt like Coach Saban decided to scale back his game plan.  Even though we weren't able to run the ball very well they stayed with it to maybe try and improve our run blocking? Experience pays in the long run... Pass blocking was basically ok IMO and didn't seem to need that much work which could help explain the previous... Just my .02 though...

This sounds about right.  They definitely stayed with the run for a reason.

Did anyone besides me feel that their dLinemen were playing really packed together? It seemed like they made it their top priority to stop the run between the tackles.

I did notice that a couple of times.

Yeah, I think so. Chris Spielman mentioned that once I think. It looks to me like that were sold out on making sure TJ and the rest of the backs didn't beat them and force AJ to beat them with his arm.

Beamer is no dummy, he's been around a long time. I think he felt that to beat Bama he had to stop their bread and butter, the run and he did. But I don't think he expected to give up 21 special team points and a pick 6 along the way. To me this was a very good game plan for Bama to have to play against and win. It was no secret as to the youth of the OL and the experience that they came away with should pay big dividends down the road. You don't get that kind of experience on the practice field. ;)

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3458/3196834036_80fed4c010.jpg)

I'm not worried.

I'm guessing we were plain vanila mainly because of so many new starters.  So partly because of that we were holding our cards.  But if OL doesn't get it together FAST, then we won't be able to play whatever cards we were holding.

Several players said VT didn't run what they were expecting or had prepared for.  aTm will have played two games by the time we get to them so we'll have a better idea what they are doing.  Surely they are holding back some too, but two games will tell us something.

If anyone is not worring about OL, this would be a good time to start.

Isn't that what coaching is for, to prepare the players?


 ???

"Chill people. I got this."
(http://www.wbir.com/images/640/360/2/assetpool/images/090829031344_saban.jpg)

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