slammer66

When you conciser the scholarship limits and the considerable gap in talent on Shula's teams vs now I don't recall a Shula team failing to show so completely. They played hard, they just weren't talented and from a technical standpoint not well coached.

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ough to get reliable info on that anymore. With NIL, a player's favorites can change at the drop of a hat.

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It's hard to get into recruiting any more. I of course want us to be doing well and signing great players but any player who signs is as likely to be gone the following year as still be there. Plus a chunk of a future starting unit will sign somewhere else completely out of my wheelhouse. I basically see who shows up for Fall and that's who I focus on. Additionally no matter who they are, starter, part timer, backup, injured reserve. There is no particular reason they would be on the roster the following year. I can't get too attached

Not a big fan of starting a skinny freshman in the SEC. I know they all want to play but it's not always a good thing. SEC lineman don't have an off button when it comes to hitting quarterbacks. Taking a beating at that age can mess with their heads.

While there are a lot of transfer QB's the transfers that are successful tend to be early on. So they arrive with another young highly rated player. End up losing the competition and they transfer to find more opportunity. The ones that do this once and land at the right place do well. the ones that end up in the wrong place or who continually keep losing the job generally have a future in coaching.

From our standpoint we've spent years grooming the three guys we have. Bringing in a ringer would destroy most of that. So you get a QB for 2025 but what will be there in 2026? It's naive to assume there will always be a game breaker available every year.

Anyway we want to win championships. Great QB's win championships but not necessarily the most talented QB's. Jake Coker wasn't an NFL caliber guy but he got us the ring. Same could be said of GMac.

What we NEED are better offensive lineman. Give me 5 NFL level offensive lineman and I could line up the school for the blind behind them and win a natty.

I'm also wondering what's going to happen when someone pays a corner 7 figures to come be their starter and some three star guy with nothing but a appearance fee from the local barBQ joint starts playing better. What's the coach going to do then?

The encouraging thing is that the defense in whole improved as the season went on even though our personnel was young in the back and not necessarily the right type players in the front. The discouraging thing was they also had some inconsistency especially on the line. Saban was obnoxiously foul on weeks we played lesser opponents. Almost to the point of questioning his sanity but now we see that as a staff you have to do something unusual to focus an 18 year old mind on playing your best against a team you should beat. we also learned that any team in division 1 will kick your arse if you don't play hard. I think one thing that really caught DeBoer off guard was how every team views the Alabama game as their superbowl. He didn't get that before. He learned it the hard way this year.

I'm expecting not just a loss, but a blowout loss. DeBoer will just stand there and watch it happen and then tell us how good Milro is after the game and how none of it is his fault. As if at that point it really matters.

I jut think Milro is a good college QB and that's it. In fact his skills remind me of Jake Coker with a little more mobility. On the plus side Coker started one season and won a natty. BUT, Coker was handing off to King henry and Kenyan Drake with ScarBo to rest them. Defensively we had 4 future NFL DB's rather than 4 true freshman playing. Defense was solid. So bring Jake Coker to 2024 and put him on this team and I think the results might be similar.

The run game showed signs of life this week. We gotta have more of that for Milro to move this team forward.

I have no inside knowledge but I've seen transitions since Perkins and that first season there are always split factions. The worse the season goes the more the cracks widen. Alabama has enough raw talent to get to the playoffs and DeBoer is trying to make that happen. BUT. Starting this spring I think you'll see a get on the boat or hit the dock sort of approach. You're either a DeBoer player or you're playing some where else.

All I know is Smart is supposed to be the top dog in college football now that Saban has retired so the pressure is all on him. They are never supposed to lose, we are supposed to lose to them. So we can just go crazy. My question is this, on the day Saban retired did Smart let up just a little. Almost imperceptibly and unconsciously. Did he spend an extra day on the golf course? Without Vader Luke was never going to become a Jedi.

Lots of good points in this thread that I agree with, including the idea that just because we are ahead we should pull into a shell. These guys get paid now, let's stop pretending this is a gentleman game. Winners keep their jobs, losers sell insurance.

but technically I'd like to see more aggressive competition for the ball from the DB's. For years we practically had to crane kick the DB to get the ball while our guys seemingly let them catch it and try to tackle them after. I'd also like to see is be more aggressive cutting the route and intercepting. I realize you have to make good choices there, be aware of who's over the top. but you can't do this in the game unless it's being pushed in practice. We aren't the most talented team on the field in college football (not this year anyway). We need to start thinking more like the hunter.