re: The First Drive and some stats

Played extremely conservative in the first half. Alabama was slowing down any runs that bounce outside and commited heavily to stopping runs yet we ran on 3rd and two and then we also had a drive where we got inside the 20 and ran it outside on back to back plays and got stuffed on both. Not saying running is a bad thing and it needs to be an option but they were selling out to stop the outside runs and we kept getting killed doing it. Throw in a couple bootlegs and they won't sell out for it as hard but didn't do enough to get them off of the runs.

That said, that's not why we lost the game. The biggest bites were the non catch and the fumble inside the 15. Also, having your best players hobbled most of the year certainly didn't help.