re: RCW shouldn’t be playing

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The bottom line question: Does this man really want to beat people’s asses? I don’t care about the fingernails or his name or the stuffed animals. I acknowledge his talent but I am not overly concerned with that either at this point. When he’s on the field, are his entire body, brain and soul focused on beating people’s asses? The way he’s playing, I don’t know that they are.

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No, I think being afraid of getting hit is probably the mental issue that prevents him from being consistently worth a shite. He's soft. Unbelievably soft. I think college was probably the first time anyone ever actually managed to really pop him and it didn't take many of those hits to have him start playing scared.

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He confirmed what has been obvious to any “ball knowers” - RCW doesn’t have that dawg in him.

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Yep, but Mr. Nice Guy KDB does nothing but constantly glaze him and name him captain. He's probably the most expensive guy on our roster.

KDB said he didn't even talk to Ryan about the drops because "he knows how incredible Ryan's response will be". Maybe KDB should invite The Film Guy to the team meeting because he'd actually have the balls to call out poor effort.

Most players that are afraid of getting hit doesn't return punts.

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To add insult to injury, the 4 best HCs in cfb right now, all used to coach at Alabama under Saban, and we could've had 3/4 of them.

- Kirby
- Cristobal
- Cignetti
- Kiffin

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Lets not get ahead of ourselves here. Kirby isn't leaving Georgia, Cristobal is at home at his alma mater with a ton of NIL money. Cignetti was hired at IU before Saban retired and we weren't going to hire someone from JMU. Kiffin is radioactive in Tuscaloosa.

0/4 were going to be the HC at Bama.

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His bigger liability is effort. If you watch The Film Guy, Brooks Austin on Youtube he just dropped a film analysis on the game and he thrashed RCW. He had some splash plays after the catch, but he was lazy in the blocking game. He ducked blocks on plays that would have been TDs had he made any effort to engage. Straight up avoided contact multiple times. He also stopped running on broken plays and took himself out of plays with low effort. His numbers look good but the film was very, very bad. He may need to sit simply because of how much tape there is with him giving low/no effort.

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Oof. This is so much worse than it looked for him live on the game coverage. RCW needs his snaps reduced.

100%.

This isn’t going to help us beat people. We need players on the field who will help us beat people. Again that should be the bottom line.

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Most players that are afraid of getting hit doesn't return punts.

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Yep. They even talked about how many hard hits Ryan has taken while making contested catches the past 2 years during the broadcast Saturday. They made a point of how when he gets rocked he still manages to hold on to the ball and most of his drops are against air.

I think his laziness Saturday may have had more to do with the opponent than fear or anything. He wouldn't be the first guy to play down to competition. It's still not acceptable but I wouldn't bench him or reduce his snaps over it. He's still out most talented receiver.

I’m responding to the thread in general.

Even Coach Saban said that you treat some players differently. Most of you remember Andre Smith. He was someone who makes RCW seem like Xavier Griffin or Jireh Edwards in terms of effort. He was also the most devastating run blocker I’ve ever seen, and of course Saban knew it. He told Smith once that if he would put forth the effort, he could be an all time great. But though his effort was spotty CNS always played him. He was 1st team All-SEC in 2007-2008, won the Jacobs trophy in 2007, unanimous All-American in 2008, won the Outland and Jim Parker trophy in 2008 and was the 6th player taken in the 2009 draft. If he had not had “issues” he would have likely been Alabama’s 1st number 1 pick in the NFL draft. He had “issues” in his NFL career just like in college. He had a few good years and made several 10s of millions of dollars but never came close to his potential. Nevertheless, with these things known, he signed several contracts with 4 NFL teams, including 2 tours with the Bengals, over 13 years.

The point is that if you have exceptional talent, and of course Ryan does, almost all coaches, including Nick Saban will put up with a lot, i.e., you can get away with murder, sometimes literally.

The Alabama offense without RCW is not even close to what it is with him. IMO, no sane person would disagree.

It happens in the real world too. If an employee gets in any type of trouble, even serious or disqualifiable trouble, one of the key questions from upper management, especially in fields that require real talent, is “is he productive, is he worth keeping?”. Some employees are more equal than others. Frankly, it is often a valid approach.

Imget what you're saying tatoo but Smith might not have gotten all of that playing time with stacked Saban rosters. We are a better team on the field with RCW, when he is playing up to his ability. What pisses me off about him is he could be Smitty 2.0 with the drive that Smitty had.