re: Official In-Season Practice, Injury Reports and Press Conferences Thread: 12-0

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One of the more interesting things to me is the way that possessions screw with our understanding and interpretation of statistics. A major theme this week was the offensive “dominance” that Louisville put on against Syracuse. But that’s really deceptive; Louisville, due in large part to a big-play offense, scored extremely quickly. That meant they had an absurd 19 possessions against Syracuse. Most teams try to avoid that number of possessions against inferior opponents due to injury concerns. But it also means the numbers get over-inflated.

Here is a comparison of Louisville against three SEC teams versus low-end FBS teams:
Louisville – Scored on 10 of 19 possessions – 3.26 points/possession
Alabama – Scored on 4 of 12 possessions – 3.16 points/possession
Vanderbilt – Scored on 8 of 14 possessions – 3.58 points/possession
Auburn – Scored on 9 of 11 possessions – 4.64 points/possession
(possessions exclude game-ending kneel downs)

There are three very interesting stats here:
First, Louisville scored often, but they didn’t score touchdowns all that frequently. Alabama, despite only 4 scoring possessions, averaged almost as many points/possession due to defensive scores and touchdowns. Auburn, despite scoring over twice as often as Alabama, was about 50% higher.
Second, Louisville didn’t score that often. Only about half of Louisville’s possessions resulted in points of any kind, compared to over 80% of Auburn’s possessions.
Finally, the closest SEC equivalent to Louisville’s performance is arguably Vandy. Vanderbilt scored slightly more points/possession, and they also had a higher percentage of scoring drives (57% to 53%).

Louisville had a serious “wow” factor because they generated over 10 yards/play. However, that is largely a product of style, as Petrino throws downfield on a high percentage of plays, and they generate a lot of big plays running their quarterback. However, their offense isn’t overly consistent. Of their first 13 possessions, Louisville drives went as follows:
Touchdown – 6 times
3 and Out – 4 times
Fumbled – 2 times
Interception – 1 time
While there are a lot of points there, Louisville was actually more likely to either go 3 and out or turn it over than they were to score. That indicates a volatile boom-or-bust offense, and one that is extremely susceptible to a bizarre loss on a bad day.
One of the other reasons it looked so much better on TV is in large part due to the fact that Louisville had 12 possessions in the first half. That’s as many as or more than Alabama and Auburn had in their entire games. Put differently, by the time Louisville had scored 42 points (with 3 turnovers), Alabama had scored 38 (with 1 turnover) and Auburn had scored 51 points (with 1 turnover). There is a strong argument that Louisville, despite the high yards/play, performed worse than Alabama or Auburn from the perspective of winning the game. Thus, I would be very critical of early pundits who are going to go gaga over Louisville’s offensive production. It isn’t a mirage (they are still having crazy yards/play averages), but the production doesn’t actually translate all that well into winning ballgames.

SEC Quarterbacks:
Fun fact: there are currently 3 quarterbacks in the SEC ranked in the top 5 in both yards/play and QB Rating. They are Eason, Hurts, and White: two true freshman and a true sophomore, with Eason actually leading in both categories. As usual, all the pundits picked well-known returning starters as their All-SEC players (Kelly and Dobbs). However, while Kelly was a top-5 rated guy at both positions (and quite possibly will end there again, as FSU is skewing his numbers), Dobbs was only 8th in the SEC in QB Rating and 10th in yards/play last season. Simply put, Dobbs wasn’t particularly good last year, and it was almost inevitable that some of the first-time starters would end up being better. Further, it was extremely misguided to assume that, because 4 guys ahead of him were leaving, Dobbs would suddenly improve. Even if he were to jump from 8th to 4th as a result of the departures, it would have been because other teams got worse, there simply wasn’t much reason to expect a multi-year starter (throwing to the same players behind a worse line) to suddenly get that much better.

Some Teams May Not Be What You Expect:
Here are the bottom-five SEC teams in two major categories:

Worst 5 in yards/attempt allowed:
Miss St. – 6.8 yards/attempt
LSU – 6.9 yards/attempt
Auburn – 7.9 yards/attempt
Ole Miss – 8 yards/attempt
Kentucky – 9.5 yards/attempt

My main takeaway here: It is very surprising to see LSU and Auburn on this list. Going into this season, LSU was expected to have one of the best secondaries in the conference, and Auburn was supposed to be greatly improved. However, LSU (who was only 9th last year) has regressed to 11th, and Auburn has actually fallen from 6th to 12th. Some of that may be due to the opponents, but I note that Clemson actually averaged less yards/attempt against Troy than they did Auburn. Both of these pass defenses may have some cracks that could turn into real issues later in the year.

Worst 5 in yards/carry (on offense):
Tennessee – 4.11 yards/carry
Ole Miss – 4.08 yards/carry
Arkansas – 3.45 yards/carry
Kentucky – 3.22 yards/carry
South Carolina – 2.76 yards/carry

It’s really, really interesting to see Arkansas on this list. Even though they faced a TCU defense that gave up over 10 yards/play against South Dakota State, Arkansas is still the 12th worst rushing offense in the conference (in comparison, they were 4th last year). Allen has a live arm, which was able to generate offense against poor TCU and LT secondaries, but this should be a huge red flag for anyone that is expecting Arkansas to be a sleeper pick in the SEC this season.

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Alabama returned to the practice field Wednesday afternoon for its third practice of Ole Miss prep -- its final open practice of the week. The Crimson Tide players practiced outdoors and full pads on a partly-cloudy, 93-degree afternoon.

Here are several observations from the media viewing portion of Alabama’s Wednesday practice in Tuscaloosa:

- Cam Sims (shoulder) was running routes and moving well after an injury kept him out of the home opener.

- The first-team offensive line of Cam Robinson, Lester Cotton, Bradley Bozeman, Ross Pierschbacher and Jonah Williams remained the same during the two viewing periods. Interior line coach Brent Key could be heard across the practice field. That’s been one of the noticeable differences from last season when Mario Cristobal was the only O-line coach.

- Jalen Hurts and Blake Barnett worked with running backs Damien Harris, Bo Scarbrough and B.J. Emmons.

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- Rashaan Evans worked with the inside linebackers during the first period’s individual drills. He got some work in the dime package, when the defense was split into two groups in the second period (secondary and defensive front).

- The usual suspects of Jonathan Allen, Dalvin Tomlinson, Da'Ron Payne and Da'Shawn Hand were the defensive linemen that were in the rotation in dime. They have consistently been the team’s top-four defensive linemen.

- The dime secondary remained the same with Marlon Humphrey and Anthony Averett at corner, Eddie Jackson and Hootie Jones at safety, Minkah Fitzpatrick at Star, Ronnie Harrison at Money and Reuben Foster and Shaun Hamilton at linebacker.

- Freshmen cornerbacks Jared Mayden and Nigel Knott wore scout-team jersey Nos. 1 and 23, respectively, which represented Ole Miss defensive backs Tony Bridges (6-foot, 185 pounds) and Carlos Davis (5-foot-8, 170 pounds).

*** What’s next: Alabama head coach Nick Saban will hold a post-practice press conference at 6 p.m. CT.

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Nick Saban and the Alabama players said the team had a much better week of practice when they spoke Wednesday evening, and the Crimson Tide head coach reiterated that point during his weekly radio show Thursday night.

Saban praised the performance of Alabama’s scout team, including its three, older quarterbacks who attempted to emulate the play of Ole Miss quarterback Chad Kelly, a week after the Tide’s sloppy home win over Western Kentucky.

“Our scout team did about as good a job as we ever have done,” Saban said. “When you have two older quarterbacks like David Cornwell, who’s been here for a long time, even Cooper Bateman -- and all the guys rotate down there -- Blake Barnett, because the kind of offense they have and the kind of athletic quarterback they have in Chad Kelly, and those guys’ leadership just helps everybody do a better job.

“I think it helped significantly this week that we had a pretty good. Now, we made a lot of errors on defense because of going fast, but I think hopefully we made those errors in practice and maybe we won’t make them in the game.”

Saban wasn’t alone in his compliment of the scout team. Cornerback Minkah Fitzpatrick also spoke highly of his teammates’ effort and job of mimicking the Rebels -- a team Alabama will look to end its two-game winning streak.

“The scout team did a great job in practice,” Fitzpatrick said. “Coach Saban actually mentioned it today how well they were doing. They’re bringing in guys from both sidelines and moving real fast, they’re fresh. They’re running, and we’re going 8-9 plays in a row with hands on our hips, getting tired, but it’s going to get us right for the game.”

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