re: Bama Football Tidings

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Unavailable
CB Cam Brown
DL Jacolbe Cowan
K Dominic DiMaccio
DT Ty Hamilton
WR Jaylen Harris
K Blake Haubeil
OT Dawand Jones
LB Cade Kacherski
LB Mitchell Melton
DE Tyreke Smith
DT Tommy Togiai
SAF Kourt Williams
RB Miyan Williams

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The University of Alabama’s Million Dollar Band will be making its first appearance at Thursday’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The band’s 400-plus members will have a spot of honor, escorting Santa Claus for the parade’s finale.

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Cincy’s ground game in general, and Ford’s rushing numbers in particular, should be taken with a whole shaker of salt. It is a run-first offense, but Ford has been a boom-bust player. There were several games where he went well over 10 YPC...and an equal number where he was at 3-4 YPC. In the two games against Power 5 teams, he was very much Just A Guy: 37 carries for 137 carries (3.7 YPC), and just two TDS — neither of which were against Notre Dame.

In fact, UC underperformed the average rushing output by all opponents of ND and IU, both in YPA and YPG.
The performance of the running game against P5 opponents hints at an offensive line that is very average at its heart. The Bearcats allow a 16% play-disruption rate, which has resulted in a rushing efficiency of just 24%. And, when only 1/4th of your running plays are efficient ones, you run the ball 56% of the time, and yet 1 out of evert 6 plays are no-gainers or losses, then you see a fairly high negative-drive offense (for a playoff team); one that sits at just 44th.

That is a whole lot of negative drives. This means the Bearcats are geting behind the chains a great deal. For a team that wants to win by controlling the LOS, RTDB, and making manageable throws, that is brutal. This is by far the worst negative-drive efficiency offense of the 2021 playoff field, and narrowly edges out the 2015 Washington Huskies and 2017 Clemson Tigers for the worst of the playoff era.

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With all of these negative drives putting UC into bad spots, it’s no surprise then that the Bearcats are fairly mediocre on 3rd down. They sit at just 41% on the year (57th). Against teams with winning records, that number falls to 39%. Against the two Power 5 teams, Cincy was simply awful: 28% conversion rate. And against two ranked teams on the schedule, UC was indescribably bad — just 10.53%.

It goes without saying that all of these marks are lows for the 2021 playoff field, and the very worst of the playoff era. In fact, until Participation Trophy Expansion begins, I don’t think we’ll see a worse output.

Alabama BTW? Second-best in the nation in creating disruptive plays on 3rd down — 51% of all 3rd down snaps are going for no-gain, losses, batted passes, sacks and the like. Godspeed, Bearcats.

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Where does that blame lie? It’s equally apportioned, but we can start with Ridder who is, on third down, everything that Bryce Young is not. He completes just 44% of his tosses on 3rd down, has not thrown a score on 3rd and long all season, and has generated just two explosive passing plays of 25+ on third down...all year. In addition, his passer rating drops fully 60 points overall when 3rd down arrives

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