I don't think Alabama will win Saturday

I think you're wrong

I think we'll win but it's gonna be close. I think the OL plays better, not flawless, just better. I also think our defense will play better than last year and not have us playing from so far behind.

Having said that, I won't be shocked if A&M wins either. Manziel is a hell of a QB that can hurt us both ways. I think it'll be a good game though.

While I think its a tossup, I disagree with you on this:

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They'll most likely play bend don't break D and look to get some turnovers. But they shouldn't look lost like they have been.

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Why do you say that? Honestly, I think that its bad for them that the suspended players first game of the season will be against us. It will AT LEAST take them a half to get acclimated to get back to playing big boy football.

I remember my first big game.

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As bad of a game as the O-line had, I really feel that our playbook was very Vanilla the first game. I think the approach we need is what we took against LSU in the 2011 N.C. game. First down play action passing and keep the slot receivers and tight ends the the main receivers. Make there Line backers cover 1 on 1 to stop us.

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This is good stuff.

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Look I'm not scared or pissed or being chicken little. I just honesty don't see Alabama winning unless something MAJOR changes from last game.

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Something is. We will be going up against A&M's defense not VT's

VT will most likely be the best defense we will face all season outside of maybe LSU, but they haven't proved that yet.

Plus this team has been preparing for this game all offseason. VT was just a speed bump they had to deal with to get to this game. This was apparent looking at the game.

The offense needs to step it up big time, but the key to beating aTm is just preventing them from scoring 30 fricking points in the first half. That's what killed us last year. It seemed like we were down 3 TDs before the game even started.

All our O-line needs to be is better than Sam Houston State and we will AT LEAST be in position to win the 4th quarter.


Also, we got Christion Jones. /game

I am absolutely not being homer when I say this but I am convinced that not only will Bama win Saturday I believe they will win big.

I watched the Bama - VT game numerous times and I am convinced of a few things:

1. Bama's OL wasn't as bad as they looked - What I saw was a serious stubbornness in the play calling and a lack of execution not bad play, a lack of experience seemed to be the biggest issue especially with live bullets so to speak. It was a perfect situation to have a game under their belts and film to bark about for 2 straight weeks, yeah Bama could've gone 4 and 5 wide and tossed it around and made the D respect the pass but they didn't so even on pass plays VT's D teed off and brought the house on blitz schemes.

2. Va Tech's D was really good and experienced - I kept watching over and over and thought the idea and felt crazy for thinking it until I heard another ESPN Football analyst Trevor Matich, who played college and pro football, on Finebaums radio show say the same exact thing...after watching most SEC teams we will face that VT has the best looking Defense we will see, even better than LSU. That defense stacked the box and played man to man on the outside WRs an easy scheme unless you can dial the pressure with blitzing schemes and Foster was a wizard. They knew they were undermanned and smaller but also knew the DL and LB corps was experienced and Bama's OL wasn't so the plan worked to throw the kitchen sink at the OL and man up on the outside back end zones and the pressure the OL couldn't shake was what threw everything out of whack.

3. The flow of the game because of the Special Teams and D scores was weird - Bama was up early because of the other scores and allowed a lot less urgency to score on Offense...a nice problem to have, but for an offense struggling like Bama's was it can make the offense look anemic

These 3 factors are what gave me hope for this Saturday, I also know this is the game the staff has used as motivation, the VT game a lot of the team didn't seem motivated and was just going through the motions. I expect the whole mentality of the team to be vastly different on Saturday

I could be extremely wrong but it has been apparent to me even in recruiting how every waking moment building this team's D was geared toward stopping a spread attack and downfield passing attacks, guys have all lost weight and gotten quicker and the D was visibly faster. The 1 breakdown on the long TD run was the wrong scheme and a bad tackling attempt on a scheme Bama had no idea VT would run (Saban even said they watched a lot of film and didnt see a single read option scheme with Loeffler's O they broke down out of that scheme) I don't expect Kirby or Saban to make a similar mistake on Saturday, they know what schemes aTm runs, it's the unexpectedness of Manziel and I suspect we will see a QB spy or more effective a run blitz on one side and a contain scheme on the other. It will be interesting to see what Kirby uses. I hope Johnny is ready and not hung over from the Drake OVO convert you can bet he will be at the night before.

I have not made a prediction on this game yet but I will probably on Friday, still have to watch aTm vs SHSU

I don't either, but I've said that about nearly every other big game. I just don't think we will have improved as much as we need to. A cupcake game would've been nice last week.


ETA: And I don't just mean offense. I'm more worried about the defense than the offense.

They certainly were not destroyed against VT.