re: WTF was Saban thinking kicking that FG?

Fact: Everyone makes mistakes, great coaches, parents, ceo's, and yes even Saban.

It doesn't make Saban an average coach. It just means he's human. I'll trade 3 BCSNC, several #1 recruiting classes, etc. for a bad decision every now and then...Roll Tide....13 days. 6 hours. 36 min. 47 sec.

OB, you've met me

You know that's me in your Avi

Please take it down

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There was no doubt in my mind that a Hail Mary would be called.

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Sounds like you were wrong, too.

It was the only time he should have been in the game. Pull him out once he lost his head, put him in to try the long one. He would have shanked it out of bounds and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

cade's kick would have either been blocked or just went to far to the side for aubbie to catch it.

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He was 10x the athlete of anyone on the field wearing crimson. It's not like Davis made some incredible run by juking by Landon Collins and pulling a spin move on Clinton-Dix. He ran straight ahead, veered left and ran 109 yards untouched. He probably could have picked any angle or side of the field and had a TD run. That was horrible coaching by Bama. Plain horrible.

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I can't disagree entirely. If you're as old as I am, it was deja vu all over again. Granted, the Iron Bowl was a FG return and not a punt return, but I kept seeing images of John Hannah and Jim Krapf trying to stop Johnny Rodgers. I never liked Saban's justification either...saying that they were supposed to "fan out". You can say you work on it in practice...but the Kouandijo brothers could spend three hours every day throwing deep post patterns to each other and they would still be no damn good at it.

And another thing...that game was lost in large part because Saban never upgraded his kicking game after 9-6. It's my one pet peeve about the program. And after watching the A-Day game, it continues to be extremely frustrating that we ended spring practice with a place kicking game that appears to be an abomination. In three years now there's enough anecdotal evidence to make one wonder if that part of the game is really that important to Saban. He likes to say that any series that ends in a kick is a good one. That may be true if you can average a net of 45 yards a punt and you've got a placekicker who's deadly from 50 and in. But Alabama hasn't had that in a few years. The Iron Bowl pretty much shot that theory of Saban's to hell.

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WTF was Saban thinking kicking that FG?

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"If we make this kick, we win the game."

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Mandell averaged 47yds last year and 45 the year before.

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Yes, he did. My point is that you have to have excellent punting and placekicking...we only had half the equation.

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Foster missed one field goal last season, before the last game of the season. Shelley was perfect in '12 and 21/27 in '13

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Shelley was good for short range only. And 21/27 isn't very good considering that he was a short range kicker. The fact that we had to use two kickers is evidence of the weakness I'm talking about. In 2013 we were fortunate that our offense rarely left us in position to need a field goal from distance. In 2012 Foster missed at least 5 FGs from 44 and beyond, and on at least four other occasions Saban passed on a FGs from 52, 53, 54, and 56 and elected to punt. Between 9-6 and last year's Iron Bowl, Foster only had one other FG attempt that could reasonably be described as one that could have been a difference maker, and that was the 49 yarder he missed against Georgia in the SECCG. So in the only three big games where we actually needed him to help win a game, he failed.