re: Ecstatic Bama won, but I still think DeBoer = Mark Richt

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No! The coaching staff did NOT tell the kicking team to snap the ball with 20 seconds On the play clock. Which is more likely? The guy who has successfully coached a number of teams into playoffs and has a phenomenal record against top teams and top coaches told his snapper and punter to snap the ball with 20 seconds on the clock, or the punter who can’t punt more than 40 yards screwed things up?

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Part of the problem we have on this board is that people post things without understanding how football works. For instance, the punter is never responsible for when the ball is snapped. The person responsible for when the ball is snapped on a punt is typically called the “personal protector” or sometimes referred to as the “upback.” He’s responsible for the formation, checking with the punter that he’s ready. and then signaling to the long snapper to snap the ball when the long snapper is ready. If you listen to DeBoer’s press conferences after games, you would have heard him mention after the UGA game that LT Overton was injured and the backup missed a call on the punt block.

Secondly, no one is saying DeBoer actively told them to snap the ball early. That doesn’t make any sense at all. We’re saying that he didn’t tell the personal protector and long snapper to not snap it until the clock was at 2 seconds. If the personnel protector was on the field for the previous play, you tell the long snapper (or literally any other player on the punt team that is on the sideline) to relay the message. Venebles was already using his timeouts and we were being very conservative with our play calling, so it was obvious we were going to have to punt. He literally could have told the personal protector and long snapper to make sure the clock had gone down 2-3 different times on that drive during 2 different timeouts. He does not have a detail oriented personality and just doesn’t think about these things until after the mistakes have been made. Saban was a master at being prepared beforehand, but most coaches know how to manage these little details on gameday and it’s very rare to see a coach making this amount of money be this bad at situational awareness. He would have been better off just letting the clock run out and taking a timeout or delay of game than not telling his team to make sure the clock was down to 2 sec before the snap. Trading 5 yards for 18 seconds would have absolutely been a better call than what he did.