Bama's D is built for a power running game

I mentioned in another thread my thoughts. While Urban Meyer's offense at Florida was Spread Option it was not a HUNH offense. And also every team going up tempo isn't the same type of offense. Malzahn like I have alluded to has ran at least four very different offenses at Auburn, Arkansas State, Tulsa, and Arkansas. The offense he currently runs is using Zone Read concepts with invert veer to create basically a Spread version of Wing T. Hugh Freeze runs a pretty generic Spread offense. Butch Jones coached under both Air Raid and Spread Option coaches and his offense at Tennessee looks to be fairly generic. Kevin Sumlin's offense is the basic Air Raid, it has just been complemented by a dynamic athlete at QB.

4 very different offenses using tempo to cover talent deficiencies and the fact that the offensive schemes they run are very basic.

What Saban and Stoops developed during the offseason before the 2009 season though can be a very effective tool for stopping HUNH and Spread offenses of various types. And yes offenses can be HUNH and Spread but not all the offenses are the same nor do they have to be both.

Saban and Stoops took Saban's masterful defensive concepts and created a "Speed chess" defense that like you suggest relies on lighter personnel. Instead of us simply changing who we recruit though, when Saban used it to great effect he simply played an OLB on the DL, a Safety at LB, and a Corner at Safety. The best example of Saban using this speed chess philosophy is the 2009 SEC championship game. Go rewatch that game. Eryk Anders plays the Jack the whole game as a Rabbit rusher. We play almost all four man line that game with Anders as the fourth guy. On most downs behind the DL is McClain and Mark Barron who played in the box as a Will LB except on third and long. On third and long Barron would slide back to more a true strong safety look. But on early downs the Nickel back that game - Arenas - would play the true safety role. He also baited Tebow to throw short routes to the slots. These moves playing Javy on slot guys and baiting Tebow led to the big red zone Interception where Tebow thought he had a for sure TD.

The Speed chess version of Saban's D is really effective against spread offenses but it requires a fairly experienced and versatile 11 guys. Other times we famously used the Speed chess D was the 2012 BCS title game against LSU where we embarrassed Jordan Jefferson and an LSU Offense that played into hands like a fiddle. Again this required a veteran D. That is why we weren't playing this D in 2012 against A/M. Like I said one reason we lost that game was Manziel/Sumlin subbed us to death. We spent so much time running Nico and Mosley on and off the field that they could never get a feel for the game. While our D was far from uniformly veteran this past year we used the Speed Chess D against Texas A/M especially baiting throws with our safeties. I know for a fact that Sunseri was baiting Manziel on the big INT pick six. Again the effectiveness of the D was hampered by the youth in our secondary. There has been only one time where the Speed Chess D was picked apart. In 2010 we stalemated Cam for a good portion of the Iron Bowl by confusing the hell out of him, he only beat us because he was uniquely able to exploit that D's one weakness. On obvious passing downs he threw down field into Tight windows and completed them even when we tried to bait him to throw.

So no great D is unbeatable. Just like no great O is.

Thanks for the informative read.
I read your entire post.