Eitla

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That's why everyone is saying it's tougher to win now than it was in the 50s and 60s.

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But, it's not? Why? Because the talent wasn't there back then like it is now.

I really don't know why people can't grasp this?

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Yeah this was my point, which is why I said Bryant dominated recruiting in the south. Jesus dude.

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But the South wasn't really that important to the Tide. They had much larger ambitions each season so, they had to play by the rules of the United States as a whole, not just the South.

Because the Plainsmen, Gators, Chinese Bandits, etc... were non-factors and non-entities in college football didn't mean that Alabama could just accept being as sorry as them.

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Just stop.

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frick off, please? As long as Plainsmen wish to claim that Bryant was some radical cheater, unknown to his age, I'll continue to ridicule you and him and them.

Hey, guess what, coaches drank whiskey back then too and it wasn't just Bryant doing it.

Although, listening to a PigHearder from Opelika, you would think that their beloved Coach Shuggy wasn't a slobbering drunk but, guess what, he was by today's standards.

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I would put Saban above Bear bc Saban did it without the benefit of paying players...

[Insert pics of Julio and DJ Fluker's cars]

Well, I guess they are about the same.

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Well, Well, Well, I guess you are just retarded, right? If Bryant paid players, every coach pretty much paid players in the 50's, 60's, and 70's.

If Saban doesn't pay players in the 1990's and 2000's, then probably no other coaches are paying players in this era either.

Go back to the Opelika Wal-greens and wait on your fat cow cankled step-wife to end her shift.

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Because Nick Saban exhausts all of his players ability while they're in college

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Rebel, for absolute football retards like yourself, who like to pretend, for some reason, like they are intelligent, I give you this:

Richardson's misuse.

I'll just c/p the answer I gave to this question last year since it's relevant.

"It's not about the fact that they all came from Bama, it's the fact that all these Bama backs have (mostly) not been used properly. Bama's offense is basically a carbon copy of the Texans/Seahawks/Redskins offense. It's all zone runs, lots of PA boots thrown in with deep shots to Amari Cooper (and Julio Jones back in the day).

For a running back, reading zone blocking is way, way different than reading power. In a zone scheme the reads are often protracted and take more time since any one of three or four different holes could open up over the course of one run.

For instance, on a zone stretch the primary read might be a 5-tech defensive end. If his offensive tackle executes a successful "reach block" and seals the edge, then he races to the corner and tries to turn up field. If the defensive end beats the tackle to his outside shoulder, then his read suddenly becomes off the guard and center (depending on the alignment of the defensive front).

Again, he's reading to see if the defenders are on the right or the left of their blockers. Because of the lateral motion of the run, defenders can't really "two gap" like they normally would against a north-south power run scheme.

Either they contain play side, or pursue back side, not both. The back reads which linemen win, which linemen lose, and makes his decision based off of that. The read takes longer, but if you have a back that can do it they can be deadly. Often this vision is what makes or breaks a one cut zone runner rather than athletic ability (case in point Arian Foster and Alfred Morris).

Now, on a power scheme the back is often reading one designed hole that the play is intending to get the ball through from start to finish. It's a faster read, and more often than not the back has to follow a full back or pulling lineman into the hole and react based on whatever chaos gets created in the wash.

Power runners are often more athletically gifts (or just flat out bigger humans) because they have to bounce, juke, and pound their way through a mass of bodies that usually ends up in different places than initially planned.

A lot of pure zone runners either lack the instinct or lack the physical ability to succeed in power schemes because it's a completely different style of read.

Similarly, a lot of pure power runners fail in zone schemes because they lack the vision to dissect multiple blocks at the same time and make a decision to cut up field at the appropriate time (think Darren McFadden failing miserably last season when the Raiders switched to a zone scheme).

So what does this have to do with Bama backs? Indy runs power, Green Bay runs zone. Trent Richardson's bruising reputation in college caused him to get labeled as a "down hill power runner" coming into the league, but in reality he was just a one cut zone runner that also happened to be really, REALLY hard to tackle.

He's basically Marshawn Lynch 2.0, except Lynch also happens to be in a zone scheme where his talents and vision can flourish with his ability to fight for yardage.

Cleveland ran power, found out quickly that he wasn't a power runner, and traded him to Indy, who is now also finding out that he has no idea what he's doing in a power scheme.

Contrast all this with Lacy, who is in a scheme that runs lots of stretches, lots of pin and pull zone plays to the edge, and lots of tosses in order to get into situations where he is most successful - in space.

Lacy thrives when he has time to read his blocking, so the Packers cater to that by using a lot of run plays that take longer to develop than the Iso's and Dives that come with most power run games. Will the Pack run a power play every now and then to take advantage of Lacy's size?

Absolutely, but their bread and butter is letting Lacy read zone blocking and use his size and power to break tackles in space. Lacy is a very similar back to Trent Richardson.

Both of them are big, powerful runners. The only difference is that one team is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, while the other is not.

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All the other head coaches in that era were playing under the same rules as he was. Just as all the head coaches in Saban's era are playing under the same rules as Saban is.

Bear Bryant had an uncanny ability to adapt. Football was going through remarkably accelerated evolution when Bryant was coaching on the sidelines. As football changed he changed with it. He won in the one platoon era as well as the two platoon. When he felt as though the times were starting to pass him by he would re-invent himself and change his philosophy. If scholarship limitations were put into place while Bryant was coaching he would have been able to adapt to them as well.

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Very well put. These clowns believe that Bryant was somehow given special privileges over every other team and every other coach.

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pretty sure Bryant had 3 by this point too.

3 in the 60s and 3 in the 70s.

overall his teams were more dominant in the 70s and but for a few losses he could have won 5 or 6 in the 70s

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Right, great point. Bryant was -- that close to winning several more NC's than he officially won.

Hell, he lost the NC in '66 simply because Northern sportswriters wanted to prove to the South that slavery was wrong and to show George Wallace that he wasn't boss.

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Four under Saban this year. Where will that put his legacy in relation to the Bear?

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Personally, I don't buy the argument that players are better, recruiting is harder, game is faster, etc... laid out today by adherents of everything today is better than yesteryear.

It was just as as hard for a coach to win back then, with slow, little players facing other slow, little players as it is today for coaches to beat other coaches with teams full of fast, big players.

They cancel out.

Today, just as then, even though we do have more strict recruiting rules and numbers, the best teams still get the best players and more of them, just like back then.

So, really, Saban needs to win 6 NC's to equal Bryant, win about a couple hundred more games and many, many, many more SEC titles before he is even in the conversation with Bryant.

Plus, he needs to have a personality. Bryant had true friends in every walk of life, from Presidents down to dooormen, and a lot of them.

Saban is just not the man that Bryant was. It's not his fault, it just isn't there.

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Are you an alter or are you simply as blatantly ignorant of Alabama football history as you appear to be based on both this thread and the Opinion of Les Miles thread?

Assuming you're truly just ignorant of Alabama history, here are Alabama fans tearing down the goalposts after winning the 1978 Sugar Bowl:

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That was exactly 14 fans, criminals actually, who rushed the field. Show me a full field shot of Alabama fans rushing.

Can't do it because it's never happened.

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Eitla, there are 39 players on the Alabama 2014 85-man roster who are not from Alabama or the adjoining states of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee or Mississippi, approaching fifty percent of the roster.

According to "Paul 'Bear' Bryant: What Made Him a Winner," Delbert Reed (1995), Coach Bryant had fewer than eighty lettermen from outside these five states during his entire tenure at Alabama. He was an incredible coach, but ninety percent of his talent came from the Deep South.

So, not only are you incredibly wrong about Louisiana talent or their ability to field great teams with that talent, you are also dead wrong about Alabama's national recruiting before Nick Saban, unless you think that having ten percent of your active roster being from out of state makes you a national recruiter.

Facts, baby, facts.

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Are you intentionally being a frickstick? You state it yourself, the Deep South.

Alabama's recruting grounds have always been, and will be long after Saban is gone, Alabama, the Panhandle, west Georgia, most of Mississippi, and lower Tennessee, including Memphis.

It has always been thus and always will be. Louisiana means nothing to the Crimson Tide. Never has and never will.

You need to take a breather and take your head out of LSU arse for a moment.