re: WTF happened to "make his arse quit!"

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I could not be more proud of the Tide this year. The attitude of this team was what got them as far as they went. There was not one ounce of quit in them, and I think that came from a QB who was fearless, even though none of us believed in him 4 months ago.

It sucks to end the season with a loss again, but at least we lost because we were not the best team on the field, not because our team just didn't give a shite about the game. I expected a 3-loss year, and we ended up SEC champs and #1 seed in the playoffs. In my opinion, we were playing with house money after the Iron Bowl, and we still almost made the championship game.

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This guy right here gets it better than anyone I've seen. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year from the very first snap. Nothing about that changed. The part that changed was that a underrated QB believed in himself more than anyone else did and it was infectious. This team, that was supposed to have a down year after winning 3 titles in a row, got pissed off because we DIDN'T get that third title, they got behind a QB that nobody believed in and said this is NOT going to be a down year. frick this rebuilding bullshite. We are Alabama and we are gonna fricking play like it. And after they got some kinks worked out in the early season, they started doing just that.

This was a pack of fricking wolves with the most unlikely alpha dog imaginable in Blake Sims leading them and these guys had his back no matter what. In the end, they just didnt have what it took to finish. Not because they quit, but because they ran into a team that, other than being on their 3rd string QB (who honestly could start on 80% of the teams out there right now if he could read the entrance exam) was in a up year as opposed to our down year.

We did something this year that nobody in America thought was possible for an Alabama team to do. We overachieved. And in my heart of hears I believe it had absolutely everything in the world to do with Blake fricking Sims, and that kid will have my deepest respects until the end of days because of what he brought to this team this year.

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WTF happened to "make his arse quit!"


I'm not saying we need wholesale changes on our staff but we do need a wholesale change on our attitude.

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I've already addressed this in other threads. It seems simple to me. WTF happened? Leon Brown happened. No amount of coaching would ever make him Chance Warmack. Austin Shepherd happened. A change in staff would never make him DJ Fluker. Trey Depriest happened. There's no way in hell that Nick Saban, Kirby Smart, or anyone else could ever coach him up to be CJ Mosley. Etc, etc, etc, etc. There are way too many positions on this team where the guys playing would not have ever seen the field on the three national championship teams. Sure it's disappointing to have come so close and not won it all. But this staff got a helluva lot out of the players they had.

The defense is by far the best part of this team. 31 of their points came on turnovers. Offense fricked the defense time and again with it's abysmal performance

I think in retrospect there have been three main catalysts in the loss of "MHAQ."
The first was the loss of Jim McElwain to CSU. With Jim McElwain, there is no way we lose the A&M game in 2012, and I doubt the LSU game from that year gets close either. The Georgia game may still have been close, but to be honest, Alabama really took that game over when they got back to running the ball anyway, so maybe not.

The second catalyst was the loss of Jeff Stoutland at OL Coach. Mario Cristobal has largely gotten a pass on the performance of his lines because of the phenomenal 2012 line that matriculated out just prior to his arrival, and in 2013, Nick Saban reached a crossroads based on the softer performance of his O-line combined with Nussmeier's cutesy pass-initiated offense. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 2013 A&M game, in which A&M was dead to rights but were still let back in with some of the late 3-and-outs. I also have to think about the 2013 Iron Bowl when Nuss went pass-happy after Auburn trimmed the deficit to 21-14 and really allowed Auburn's offense to dictate the second half, however you could also make the argument that Auburn just flat out beat us in that one.

The third catalyst was, of course, the hiring of Lane Kiffin which was further embrace of the pass-predicated offense. Blake Sims made phenomenal use of this offense last year, but quite a few times it was demonstrably evident that the lack of a credible consistent run-threat from under center does not help with problems Alabama already had from a time-of-possession standpoint. I believe the deeper into this season we get, the more evident that will become.

Thanks, bruh.

And yes, I agree we've gotten away from what was bread and butter. I do believe this offense can work, (we saw it last year) but I think it's a much farther way around and ends up testing our own defense tremendously, even against far inferior opponents.