Game notes: USM vs Bama

USM vs Bama

First, congrats to the Bama players and coaches for the victory over Southern Miss. This was a game where the opponent was clearly out matched and a chance to correct some mistakes.

OFFFENSE: The offense put together 606 yards of total offense which included 395 passing and 211 rushing. For negative plays, I have Bama with 2 tackles for losses, 2 sacks, 1 fumble which they kept, and an interception. I also credit Bama with 2 three and outs, where there was 1 in each half. For plays that covered 10+ yards, I have them with 13 passing plays and 8 running plays. Bama got into the red zone 4 times and scored touchdowns each time. Three touchdowns came from outside the red zone while the other 2 came on kickoff returns.

QB: Young had a great night with 20 completions out of 22 passes for 313 yards. This equates to a 91% completion rate. He did throw one interception. This ball was a little behind the receiver, however many times that ball is caught. Two of his best throws came on the first drive. The first throw had to be thrown over the outside LB or Safety and he put it on target for a first down on 3rd and 13. The second throw was the touchdown to Billingsley where the coverage was tight and a safety overlapping over the top. Young also did another good job finding the second and third receiver in his progression. In mop up duty with Tyson and Milroe they both made a couple of good throws and played pretty well with the backups.

RB: The running backs made some big runs. Combined they ran for 219 yards on 28 carries. Williams had 110 on 11 carries, McClellan had 97 on 12 carries, and Sanders had 12 on 5 carries. To be fair Sanders was playing more with the back OL. Together they averaged 7.8 yards per carry. I will say, and this isn’t a complaint, I thought we might see more Sanders without Robinson in the game.

Rec: Seven different receivers had catches not counting running backs. Numbers, according to catches the leaders were Metchie, Billingsley, and Latu. One of the best catches of the night was by Latu but it was negated by a penalty. Also, I thought they missed a couple of blocks on the wide receiver screens as they should have blocked the most dangerous defender in my opinion. On the fumble recovery Latu had for the touchdown, Latu had 2 blocks on the play prior to the recovery. One thing I think this game did was tell other team, if you plan on taking wide receivers out of the game by defensive formations, Bama has no problem going to the TE.

OL: Overall they played a good game. They should have against a smaller defensive unit. I did see a few missed blocks. There was a combo block where the player didn’t come off early enough. However, it may not had made much of a difference on the play as a safety was filling in a hurry. Also, on a sack a defender split a double team, this may have been a communication problem in the protection. They didn’t always sustain their block as log as I thought they could have. When the backups came in there were a couple of bust when the OL was not reacting to outside pressure and basically tried to block the guy that was being blocked. The great thing is I didn’t see anything that could not be corrected, and they weren’t overpowered.

Def: The defense played better as far as assignment football than they did in the past games. They still made some mistakes, but they reduced them drastically. Overall, they were more gap sound most of the night. They still missed a couple of tackles that allowed SM to make a couple of plays. SM had a total of 213 total yards which included 131 passing and 82 rushing. For negative plays, I have Bama with 4 tackles for losses, 2 sacks, and 1 interception. Bama had 3 and outs on 8 of 13 possessions by SM. For plays that covered 10+ yards, SM had 5 passing plays and 2 running plays. They got into the red zone twice and scored touchdowns both times. Of their total yards, 190 came on three possessions.

DL: They play well. But if you look at the stats they didn’t make a lot of plays. What they did was kept the OL occupied for the LB and safeties to come up and make plays. They did make a few mistakes with gap responsibility which allowed for a couple of big runs. But like I said it wasn’t as many as in the past. On one play, I saw one DL go inside where it looked like he was in the A gap, the other DL should have been in the B gap but his path was more towards the A gap which opened up the hole.

LB: They played well. They were put in a couple of bad positions in a couple of situations. For instance, the throw to the TE for a big gain, neither guy banged the TE to slow his release and the cover LB was all the way over on the other side of the center. Pretty hard to get there without a hammer on the TE. The thing is there were two guys there where one could have done that. On another play, late the LB didn’t scrap over the DL to get to the hole the RB was coming thru allowing for a bigger gain. There was once on a swing pass that Moody didn’t take a good path to the RB. He may not have made the play, but he actually took himself out of the play with his angle. The TD was a bit of a fluke since that ball went off the LB and took the receiver away from his coverage.

DB: They made a lot of tackles. No real deep balls were completed. Almost everything was thrown inside of 10 yards. The plays that went for 10 plus yards were thrown underneath and yards were made after the catch. There were a couple of missed tackles that would have negated 10+ yard plays and one was the play that went down to the red zone where SM scored. The didn’t wrap up and bring their feet. One happened this way because the safety took a bad angle.

Special teams: The good and they bad. The good, was the TD’s from kick off returns. The bad was penalties which negated good punt returns. I also think we learned if the kick is going to kick to the right, he needs to move the ball over.

Penalties: Bama had 7 penalties for 60 yards. Again, Bama had a PI by Jobe on a drive that led to a TD. That is his 3rd in 2 games. I had Bama with 4 offensive penalties, 2 special team penalties, and 1 defensive penalty. This is actually down from the last game.

Finally, the notes are a little late because I was watching the Ryder Cup followed by the Braves game. I think Bama did make some improvement. However, they still need to get better in all phases of the game.
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