Questions about defense on Saturday

I was just thinking about this. For all the "offensive play calling sucks" threads and comments, I blame the defense more. This is two weeks in a row that we've been torched. What the hell happpened to us? Was it just that we inflated our stats against inferior opponents and when we finally played two decent teams, they lit us up and exposed something that had been there all along?

One thing I've noticed a lot this year is that in the games where we blew out our opponents, the other team made a lot of mistakes (missing wide open people, penalties in key situations, etc). That may have hidden our defects. When we actually played against a good QB that didn't make mistakes and WR that caught the ball, we seemed to be out of position--a lot. On a lot of the catches Saturday, the WR were wide open in the middle of the field. And a lot of those were the third down plays.

I guess it's more like we thought going into the season than it was after we saw them play a few games. We really are young. We really did lose some fantastic players. These guys just aren't there yet and playing inferior opponents early in the season who did not execute well or take care of the football, really inflated how good our defense really is.


I hope this is a wake up call for the Defense. Offensive play calling be damned, if we can keep the other team from scoring we will win most of our games. We just can't do that right now for whatever reason (youth, experience, mental mistakes, athleticism (Sunseri)).

OUr O went 3 and out basically in the first quarter..that was a a distrasterous start that we could not come back from. AJ missed a wide open WR that would have kept the drive alive..I put a lot of blame on the O forcing our D back on the field with out much rest

I think they were well prepared and did a few things we weren't ready for. We also had some alignments not used all season. And had some players playing in positions they didn't normally play at. It was done to get the most athletic on the field and while it did that, it took some adjusting to get into the groove of the game.

From Saban's press conference:

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–On John Fulton playing a lot against Texas A&M: “What we did was, in the last game, was … Vinnie (Sunseri) usually plays fifth defensive back, and Nick Perry had a bad shoulder, (and) Vinnie also can play the sixth defensive back. So with the no-huddle situation as it was in the game, we played Dee Milliner at Star, John at corner in his place, and then Vinnie was always the sixth defensive back, and he was in there 70 percent of the time. But we didn’t feel like we could play nickel one way and dime another. So that’s how John ended up playing. John has played well when he’s had the opportunity to play, so we thought he deserved a chance to play. And because of some injuries to some other guys, we made some of those changes. John did, he’s player of the week, he did a good job.”

–On the defensive line rotation: “We played a little different in the last game. We tried to get four guys in the last game that were athletic enough to be defensive tackles. We actually took [Adrian] Hubbard and Xzavier Dickson and Denzel [Devall], we played Ed [Stinson] inside, and we tried to get where we had four defensive ends and four inside guys that were the most athletic guys that could do their job because of the quarterback. In terms of being able to have a chance to get him on the ground or be able to pass rush a little more athletically or have a little more balanced pass rush. That was a little different in that particular game and I don’t think it’s something that we will do all the time. It’s just that circumstance and that’s the way we practiced all week. Jesse [Williams] was able to play inside because he is pretty athletic and runs pretty well. Some of the other big guys that we have, [Jeoffrey] Pagan was the other guy that played outside, we didn’t see an opportunity to play those guys much unless they were in four of five wideouts.”

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Offense killed us for the first three series. Not a defensive issue. Mac missed easy toss to Coop.

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OUr O went 3 and out basically in the first quarter..that was a a distrasterous start that we could not come back from. AJ missed a wide open WR that would have kept the drive alive..I put a lot of blame on the O forcing our D back on the field with out much rest

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I don't think there is any question the O didn't help the D (the offensive execution has been way too inconsistent), but I guess I'm a bit spoiled. I'm used to the D bailing out the O. That's the way it's always been here it seems. Seeing a team go up and down the field on us is irritating as hell no matter how bad the offense is playing.

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Seeing a team go up and down the field on us is irritating as hell no matter how bad the offense is playing.

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I suppose that is what sticks out to me. To give up 3 scores back to back is just foreign with the current staff. Logically I knew coming into this year that the defense would need more help from the offense than normal but the practical side as opposed to the theoretical side was sobering

The defense definitely got Bama in a hole, but I still think they did their job well enough the rest of the game for Bama to win.

The offense is supposed to be the strength of the team this year. Every once in a while (like basically once every 2 years or so) the offense needs to be able to score 30 points to win a game. Texas A&M has a very hard offense to defend and they played a flawless 1st quarter with a couple of breaks (e.g., the Manziel fumble straight up into the air and back down to him scramble TD pass). On the other hand, Texas A&M has an average defense. This was the one game Alabama's offense need to pick up the slack (God knows the defense has done it consistently for 5 years running now) and score 30 in a competitive game.

The offense and defense both take considerable blame, but I tend to blame the offense more mostly because they are really hardly ever required to score more than a couple of TDs to win a game, and this is the one they needed to step up and help the defense out.

With all that said, A&M played a very good, mistake free game and Bama really didnt. Sometimes the other teams just gets you.