I honestly believe we are in-between runs. We made a deep run on starting younger players and won 3 national championships. For whatever, reason this year we did not have a lot of youth starting and I believe that part of the reason is complacency that the younger guys have when they join the Tide. They automatically assume we are so stacked it'll be easy. People want to compare our defense and say it's poorly coached etc. However, it could possibly just be due to execution. When we had a badass defense we always had more than 2-3 good players that had lengthy careers @ Alabama. See Below

2009: Rolando McClain, Marcel Dareus, Terrence Cody, Kareem Jackson, Mark Barron, Javier Arenas, Dont'a Hightower

2011: Mark Barron, Robert Lester (ton of starts; not world beater), Dre Kirkpatrick, Courtney Upshaw, Dont'a Hightower

2012: CJ Mosley, Haha Clinton Dix, Robert Lester, Dee Milliner, Landon Collins

2014: Landon Collins, Reggie Ragland (maybe? although not close to the previous LBs, due to PT), Xzavier Dickson (maybe?)

We just don't have the continuity that we are used to having.All year I said this was a 2 loss regular season team. The same thing has happened to our OL. We have based our whole scheme around OL and Defense. We had a long stretch where we had so much continuity on the OL and it peaked in 2012. I think we are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel for CB problems. I think our depth is getting crazy good. Safety is going to be a bare position though unless we move someone.

I am excited for the future and looking forward to some more Bama Football!