re: Bama Fatigue

I'll chime in, and I do know I'm a guest here so will try to be as objective as can be.

The WR thing is the only thing that people constantly harp on when comparing those 2 games, yet for some reason unbeknownst to me people completely and totally ignore the other MASSIVE difference which is that we played an entirely difference defense in the SECCG than we did in the title game. In 2021 we played defense pretty much the exact same way in 14 games, and an entirely different way in 1. This is pure conjecture on my part but my GUESS is that our coaches tried ot think so many steps ahead and they ended up outsmarting themselves. My GUESS is that our coahces basically said somehting like "Ok, saban has 12 games of film on our defense doing ABC. So to counter that, he's going to do XYZ. So that means, we ghave to do something to counteract XYZ.". We played a lot looser off the ball than we did in most other games. We played FAR more QB contain that we did in any other game, it's like we were absolutely terrified of Bryce running that that was priority #1 was to not let him get out of hte pocket. There are numerous examples of some of our 1st round NFLers on the DL just absically standing straight up a thte snap and just kinda hanging out and not even considering rushing the passer.

Of course it'd be foolish to discount the loss of 2 great WRS, obviously that had an impact on the game. But it's annoying that nobody ever points out our completely assbackwards defensive game plan either. Fast forward to the NCG and you can see we emmployed the saem defense we played every other game. The DL rushed like crazy, we played more tight man coverage at CB. We brought more pressure. In that game we didn't care of Brryce got some yards on the ground, the bigger priority was making him unconfortable and not letting him have all day to pick us apart like he did in the SECCG. I think any neutral observer would agree that we got to him MUCH more often in game 2, and that has nothing to do wiht WRs being in or out.

Paul Finebaum is an idiot so I don't have any idea what he's said that prompted this thread. But I do think that our defensive gameplanning from game 1 to 2 is woefully undervalued in regards to the outcomes.