Re-watched the first half and then examined the Play-By-Play chart from SI.com for the whole game.

We're fine, y'all. We moved the ball fairly well in the first half. Out of 5 first half drives, we had 2 stalls due to inability to move the ball.

One other was the turnover on downs. (I agree with the decision to go for it. Hindsight says otherwise, though.)

Another was the Treadwell INT in Bama territory. (Poor coaching decision or poor decision by a true freshman? Treadwell had the option to run on that play according to Freeze. Maybe poor coaching decision to put that much trust in a true freshman.)

On the last we were moving the ball with regularity and got stalled by an intentional grounding penalty.

We only really had 3 possible points in the first half. Those weren't guaranteed due to Ritter's unreliability from long range.

In the second half, I think we were immediately put into a hole by the big TD run by Yeldon. After that, we didn't get back into the redzone until late in the 3rd quarter. Based on how many times we had been in the red zone to that point, Freeze had no choice but to go for 7. He was right. We only made it back in the redzone one more time. Field goals on either of our trips to the red zone would have been moral victories at best.

In the end, we made mistakes against Alabama and lost. We knew we couldn't do that coming in. They're not as glaring at the 3 INTs last year, so it seems like there's other things to blame.

If our defense could have covered up at least ONE of the THREE FORCED FUMBLES in the first half then we would have had a better chance to be in it because then Bama would have been burned by their mistakes as bad as we were. But they weren't. Them's the breaks, y'all.

I feel better now. This game was much closer than the score indicates.

ETA - Now that the game is over, let's be happy we came away injury free and that the team's attitude doesn't seem to have been hampered. All the player's quotes seem confident and positive. They're ready to bounce back.

I think that was the biggest test of our offense to date, and will be the biggest one they face the rest of the year.

This post was edited on 9/30/13 at 7:55 pm