Well, this is my 1000th post. I saved it for the occasion of the 5th game of the century in 5 years.

A thousand is a lot, and it's a bit surprising how quickly they add up with no particular effort. This happened unnoticed. This caused me to think about other things we can do that require no particular effort, but could add up, unnoticed by us. I'm thinking about a kind smile, a held door, a head nod to someone in your neighborhood who might wonder if they are welcome. A buck in the tip jar, an extra few minutes chatting with a kid who might not be getting a lot of attention at home. How easy it would be to rack up a thousand of these things, unnoticed by you, but noticed a thousand times.

Today I will be helping with a youth trip, away from the flat screen and the cold beer in the fridge. I'll be thinking about the game and rooting for the Tide. When i return I will enjoy watching the highlights, sipping that cold beer, enjoying life in proper perspective.

Roll Tide

I remember Kuiyam and Jesse talking about Saban discussing with them that when the time was right, he would help Jesse make a decision about choosing an agent. You know if he did that for Jesse, he would do that for anyone on the team. To me, this shows that CNS is committed to doing all of this the right way.

That actually took place one time when Jamos, Kuiyam and I were meeting to play golf. Kuiyam and Jesse actually met with CNS and he totally helped them through the process, THE RIGHT WAY. I don't think I am betraying any confidences here, because it already took place and was DONE THE RIGHT WAY.

Saban is a very proactive coach when it comes to compliance. He has demonstrated that time and time again. There is nothing being swept under the rug with the current Bama regime. The compliance dept. and Bill Battle have been out front on this since information has been brought to their attention.

Saban called out agents 2 years ago and made his stand on what needs to be done with them.

I don't see the NCAA taking Bama to task on this as they have in the past. Bama, Battle and CNS have been totally above board on this.

And it certainly helps that the State of Alabama has enacted laws to deal with improper agent activity to go along with improper action with the athlete, as well.

I do not see this ending badly.

 

We're only 2 games into the college football season and already there are loud rumblings of displeasure concerning the fate of some of the top coaches. In all reality, there was already some concern for a couple of them and another pacified his naysayers with a big win. There is one though that is skating on thin ice and it's just a mattter of time before the fans come after him.

There were two coaches though that really lit up the firing squad and they are Mack Brown and Lane Kiffin. Both has been on the hot seat for quite some time, as far as the fans are concerned, and the performances of their teams last night only poured some gas on the fire.

I have never figured out the love of the University of Texas for Mack Brown. He's only had one championship team since arriving there and with the size of Texas and the number of top quality athletes to recruit from, I have to question his coaching and staffing abilities. I can think of a few coaches that would have done a lot better there if given the chance.

Lane Kiffin is a bird of another feather though. He is young and cocky and doesn't mind ruffling a few feathers of others all for the sake of winning. I thought he would be a perfect fit at Southern Cal as they always seemed a liitle brash about their program and flaunted themselves as being the untouchables when it came to recruiting players. The cockiness and brashness seemed to be that perfect fit until the NCAA and their investigation came snooping around. The results of the investigation changed everything with their program and now the two of them are very average at the most. How long will this wedding last?

There is another coach at one of the major schols who seems to be paving a way for some big problems ahead and that is Will Muschamp. The loss to Miami yesterday follows a pattern of Muschamp losing to quality teams. Miami is a team that is rebuilding after going through a few years of turmoil with the NCAA but Florida hasn't had any problems other than they have been unable to coach up their recruits and win some big games. Florida State and Miami has put some huge pressure on Muschamp's career at Florida now and if he doesn't change some things in the near future and win some premium games, there will be some loud rumblings coming out of Gainsville and they can get loud down there.

Now to the good side of things. I think there was one coach who really helped himself yesterday, Mark Richt. There have been plenty of naysayers making a lot of loud noise at Georgia about Richts inability to win some big games when it counts most. The loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship last fall didn't help Richt's case at all. But yesterday, Richt and the Bulldogs did win a big game, They beat Spurrier and the highly touted Jadeveon Clowney and they beat them convincingly. This will give Richt a lot of forgiveness from the fan base and things should smooth out in Athens Ga.

There are some other coaches, Mississippi State's Mullen in particular, but I was more interested in the future of some of the top name schools in the country and these seemed to be the most interesting to me at this time. This is just my opinion and I'm sure all of you have your own as well.

First: I want to congratulate the Bama coaches and players on the win.  However, I think all should be glad CJ is on Bama’s team.  I know he couldn’t have scored with the blocking and play of others.  He was the brightest spot on the field.  I hate to say this, but Bama did not look like a number 1 team, especially on offense.

Offense:  The offense must improve.  I have them down for 6 three and outs.  I am not sure if this is worse than the 14 negative plays which include tackles for loss, sacks, and interceptions.    I also have 5 pressures by the VT defense.  I don’t know why Bama couldn’t figure out that VT has at least 6 in the box and some times more.  I really didn’t see many check off which should be a strong point of AJ’s at this time of his career.   Maybe with all the new players the coaches weren’t comfortable with it.  The Hokies decided early they were going to load the box and make Bama throw the ball to beat them.  Bama never really put enough pressure on VT with the passing game to make them quit stacking the box.  I also wonder why when playing man and the defender is lined up inside of a rec why not work the outside?  Bama got the ball in good field position a couple of times and came out with no points.  They only put 14 on the board.  I don’t know if this was a factor, but the offense did lose opportunities to be on the field  because of the punt return, the int return, and the kick off return.

QB:  I didn’t think AJ played that well.  There were too many throws off the back foot and I think the let go of the ball too soon a few times.  There were a couple of drops, some good throws and some bad throws. 

RB:  They were hit many times behind the LOS.  I don’t know why Bama didn’t try to run outside more to get away from backside numbers.   The pass blocking must improve.  I really don’t think any did a consistent job of pass blocking.  VT was well coached because the screen game was not a factor.  I did like AT and felt bad for DH.  The first time DH touched the ball he was hit about the same time. 

REC:  I am not sure if they didn’t get away or AJ wasn’t pulling the trigger.  They were a couple of balls I thought should have been caught, but weren’t. 

OL:   Here is where there better be drastic improvement.   I thought there were times when they looked good, the first drive showed potential.  I thought there were missed assignments because of communication especially when some combo blocks were necessary.   I also don’t think they took proper steps to get to where they needed to be.  I thought at times the some of the OL feet were to wide and couldn’t move well enough to make the block.  I don’t think they stayed on their blocks long enough.  I did see AK pull up in the hole and make a good block.  Probably one of the funniest things I saw was when CJ lined up as a tight end.

Defense: The defense played pretty well except for a couple of plays.  I have VT with 9 three and outs.  The D only came up with 4 negative plays one of which was an int for a TF.  They also pressured the QB about 7 times.  There were a couple of huge stats too me.  First, VT had 212 total yard and 111 came on 2 plays. Second and probably the biggest, I counted at least 6 catchable balls that would have been first downs and kept drives alive.  This was not because of the D, they were just dropped.  With that all being said, this means VT only had 101 yards the rest of the game.  I also think Bama played with a very basic defensive scheme. 

DL: I thought the D line played a solid game most of the night.  I did notice and the announcer pointed it out the Tomlinson got driven past the center.   I don’t know if he was supposed to be on a stunt or if he just got caught and driven. 

LB:  CJM stands out all the time.  He did miss a tackle, but I can take 1 missed tackle when there were few.  Others came in and played well I thought.

DB: One of the biggest surprises to me was John Fulton.  I thought he played well.  The secondary came up and played the option, the few times VT ran it, very well.  They did get beat deep a couple of time, but fortunately they didn’t come up with a play.  VS had a great read on his int and never broke stride on scoring the TD.  As a whole I thought the DB’s played pretty well.  As, I said above, I think they played with a basic scheme, I think coverage will even get better with more blitz packages.

Penalties: Bama had 4 for 25, 2 of which were holding calls on CK.   

Special teams:  This is where Bama excelled.  They had 2 TD’s one on Kickoff Return and the other on the Punt Return.  The coverage was very good most of the night.  The last punt return was the worse, but the punter made the tackle.  I don’t know if anyone noticed, but I think it was 49 that went down on the kickoff coverage team and blew a couple of people up.  This allowed others to make the play.  I also wanted to point out CJM running not quite stride for stride with CJ on his KOR for the TD, but close.

Finally:  Again, Congrats to the Bama team and coaches. 

Please feel free to comment.

Good Luck and Roll Tide Roll 
15 and counting

After watching the Tide struggle through 60 minutes of football, I thought I would get an accurate assessment of Bama's struggles from all of the CRS coaches.

I'll start it off by saying the offense played like they practiced in the last scrimmage. There seemed to be a lot of indecision of players that weren't sure of what they needed to do or where they needed to be. This was probably due though to the fact that some were freshmen, redshirt freshmen, and first time starters, practice is one thing but playing realtime is another.

AJ had one of his worst games that I have seen him play and again the lack of execution from all of the new starters and players probably had a lot to do with that. I did notice though that a lot of his passes were thrown off his back foot falling backwards, maybe the constant pressure from the VT rush was causing that.

The defense played ok but a good offensive team would have given them fits last night.
Bama will miss the likes of Jesse Williams in the middle of the line this year, that was pretty evident last night. I think other teams will come after Bama in that area in future games.

If there was a plus for the team last night it was the special teams. I think back to when we were all complaining about Bama's special teams play, the kickers, returners, and the inability to keep the other team around or behind the twenty yard line on kickoffs. Also Bama was never able to turn the field advantage around with the punting game. Last night was very big for the special teams and it might be the mark of the team this year in being able to keep the other teams at bay when the offense is struggling.

I saved the best for last and that was the play of Christion Jones. I have said many times on our board that Jones may be the best athlete on the team and I stand by that statement. He can do so much for this team whether it is catching or running the football and he does it well. I listened to his postgame remarks last night and he is a very gracious and humble young man.

Regardless of how it may have looked, Bama came away with a win and it was a big win because it was the first game of the season. They didn't come out of the gate the way we all would all have liked, but they took care of business  as good teams do. I think practice will have a different meaning the next two weeks before playing the Aggies because there's a little incentive involved with this one. Roll Tide!!