re: Official Spring Camp Thread - A-Day - April 11th at 1 p.m. CT - Roster in OP

Not really concerned about stats in an A-Day, just more of individual plays or anyone that showed flashes.

Saban defenses routinely shut down great run games so it was to be expected. I'm firmly in the wait and see camp, but Seattle's run game immediately getting fixed after moving on from Grubb doesn't give me a good feeling.

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Saban defenses routinely shut down great run games so it was to be expected. I'm firmly in the wait and see camp, but Seattle's run game immediately getting fixed after moving on from Grubb doesn't give me a good feeling.

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Same here. They had a pretty competent run game when at UDub. But we're entering year 3 in Tuscaloosa, so those alibis have less credence today than a year ago.

Is there a source to watch any of the A day. Youtube perhaps. I will go look but my intranet skills are not the best.

I was there yesterday and my thoughts:

I know Austin Mack was hobbling a bit but I felt like Keelon separated himself a bit yesterday. Both had a few throws they probably wanted back (the Mack INT by Dre Kirkpatrick was a bad pass) but Russell had some really great throws. I felt like Russell didn’t try and get cute by threading passes that weren’t there, which is encouraging.

Ryan Coleman Williams looked good. Derek Meadows looked good, made some tough catches. Cederian Morgan flashed. Hated to see Rogers go down.

O line (IMO) looked slightly improved. At times they got some movement and others, they got stonewalled. It would be nice if they were consistently stout but the youth and inexperience showed at times. I think having William Sanders at guard and those other 4 getting reps, reps and more reps in August will help.

To be fair, I thought the D line looked very improved. Those guys are big and quick AND we have depth. They’re very tough to handle.

ILBS looked good. QB Reese impressed. Not the tallest but he’s stout, flies to the ball and lays the wood. Luke Metz flashed.

Secondary looked good overall. They gave up some passes but part of that was due to some really, really good passes that were extremely difficult to defend. It bears mentioning that Bray Hubbard wasn’t out there yesterday.

Lorcan Quinn is the best kicker. Period. Kicked a couple of 47 yard FGs with plenty of leg to spare. Probably could hit a 55 yarder with that leg.

Overall, improvement is needed but still, more positives than negative out there. I’m sure some will disagree but these are just my opinion.

A team with a young QB and OL better be able to run better than last year or the results are apt to be worse

Yup, Macdonald was right too. Seattle was not statistically any more efficient on the ground than 2024 with Grubb but the commitment to grinding out 3.5 yards per played to their elite defensive unit.

I think our defense is really close to being that kind of unit for the college level if the size upgrade with the 3-down in the portal pays off.

We need to be able to grind on teams just a tad bit more. I don't expect 60% run out of DeBoer and Grubb but we need to be hitting on-schedule yardage more often than not and pop 2 maybe 3 explosive runs per game.

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I’m hoping that DeBoer has had the conversation with Grubb and Klemm about running the ball more.

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There’s very little point yelling at someone to run the ball when you’re one of the least efficient teams in P4 at doing that. We just didn’t have a line capable of doing that consistently even against average teams.

I hope we run more but that it’s because we’re more competent at doing so rather than just running to maintain some vague sense of balance that usually just results in wasted downs like it did last year.