re: Joel Klatt said our 2019 team was better than 2020

The defense was not good either year but it was definitively better in 2020. Will Anderson added some hurries. Surtain took away one receiver on the field every play.

2019 was arguably the worst defense of the Saban era. They couldn't stop the run. Couldn't stop the pass. The edge rush was the best aspect of the team but they weren't practically great compared to the edge guys from the 4 years since.

Also, I'd argue that the 2020 offense had something that the 2019 offense didn't: the back to the basket 7-step drop play action. The 2018 and 2019 offenses were built around Tua's quick processing and release. You didn't really want to do much long developing play actions that suck up the defense toward the LOS. Tua's best attribute was keeping his eyes down field. Furthermore, since Mac did so well with the play action it lended itself to committing more to true 100% run calls instead of the RPO. So the OL got to fire off blocks more to create more explosive runs.

I'd argue the weakness of the 2018-2019; 2021-2022 offenses was precisely because the QB's skill sets led to more RPO passing.