Initial Impressions: Alabama Football blows it in embarrassing fashion to Vanderbilt

In the most foreseeing move I’ve ever seen, Josh was unable to watch this game today, and I agreed to handle the game recap.

Woe is me.

Alabama, who hasn’t lost to a bottom-feeder team since L.A. Monroe back in 2007, was served a massive slice of humble pie by the nerds of the SEC. Perhaps it’s only fitting that it’s by the same QB, Diego Pavia, that broke Auburn at the end of the season last year.

The game started with Alabama’s defense giving up a long scoring drive, and nothing much changed after that. The Commodores got a quick pick-6 off of a lucky deflection, and suddenly had a 13 point lead that Alabama never recovered from.

For what it was worth, Jalen Milroe and the Tide’s WR group played spectacularly for most of the game, picking up huge chunks of yards and gobbling up scores – but ultimately it didn’t matter, as every time Alabama scored, Vanderbilt responded with another long drive for their own TD and the Alabama defense was rendered effectively useless.

The Tide did have a chance to take the lead in the 4th, but RT Elijah Pritchett chose a bad moment to totally whiff a block and Jalen Milroe got blasted in the pocket and fumbled the ball, giving Vanderbilt the advantage back on the scoring/clock back-and-forth, and the defense never got another stop.

It’s a big lesson for new head coach Kalen DeBoer. You do NOT take a week off in the SEC. While the first ¹⁄₃ of the season has felt like a fever dream for Alabama fans, losing to Vanderbilt is something that absolutely can’t happen. It just can’t, and it’s the kind of wake-up call for a new coaching staff that will force them to relentlessly prevent this from happening again, or else there will be a massive sized weight of angry Alabama fan expectations bearing down on them.

We picked a good year for a 12-team playoff. Alabama has proven they can beat any team in the country – but they haven’t proven they won’t lose to anyone, either. They have time to figure that out and lay waste in the playoffs… But will they? If the cracks are already exposed, can they fix them? It remains to be seen…. And the entire country will be watching, waiting, and circling for the demise of Alabama. They’ve waited 17 years, and now there is blood. Good luck, Coach DeBoer.

In any case, here are a few observations about the team as a whole:

The Passing Game is Legit

19/25 for 312 yards is absurd. The growth we’ve seen from Jalen Milroe since his season under Tommy Rees last year is astounding. From a start-and-fits offense based on scrambling and first-read deep bombs to Milroe showing he can be a true pocket passer and hit nearly every route on the field (even TE seams!!!), it’s been cool to see.

On top of that, what more can we even say about Ryan Williams? He keeps this up, and he very well might be the best WR in college football since….? I don’t know. Not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it. And on top of it all, William’s attitude is just so great. He gets blasted and pops right back up, and when he doesn’t get the ball, you’ll see him going all out with his perimeter blocking despite being all of 170 pounds.

Past Ryan, though, is Germie Bernard. The Washington transfer has been a revelation too. He’s made some huge tough catches (that one down the sidelines was an insane difficulty) and he also seems to make at least one person miss every time he catches the ball.

Defense….

I honestly don’t even know where to start here. The entire defense failed in pretty much every conceivable way on nearly every play. The option offense was a throwback to 2012 when the pistol and read option were all the rage in college and the NFL. The thing is… That went out of style by around 2017 or so. It had mostly been figured out – there’s no excuse for a defense to look like they had no clue to how defend it.

The defensive line was effectively neutralized. They did next to nothing all game. The linebackers were subsequently given the impossible task of deciding who to cover, and were always outnumbered. And the DBs…. Man, they seemed to miss every tackle, got drug past the line for first downs, AND still got beat deep.

Look, I spent all offseason singing the praises of Kane Wommack’s scheme and coaching style. It’s a system that I’ve seen work exceptionally well and one that I think should be ahead of the curve as the pendulum swings back away from the Fangio two-high defenses.

When a defense pulls an extra safety up to the box for most of the game, I can forgive the occasional gaffe on a deep post. It’s the tradeoff of the scheme…. But you can’t run that formation AND still give up a billion first downs in the run game and on QB rollouts.

I don’t know what the issue was there. Scheme, mentality, or what. But it was a total collapse, and it’s on Wommack to correct it, however that looks. The lack of any adjustments after the early onslaught is an terrible indictment.

Offensive Line

This is a weird one. The OL seemed to keep Milroe pretty clean for most of the game, outside of the game-breaking whiff from Pritchett at the end. At the same time, while the yards per carry for the two running backs looks fine, it’s mostly boosted by a 32 yard scamper from Jam Miller. Outside of that play, the backs were mostly bottled up, as was Milroe on his rushes.

It’s still good to the pass protection do as well as it has, but the line hasn’t seemed to really be able to keep things clean enough to get anyone blocking downfield. That’s part of the tradeoff of running a power blocking scheme rather than zone blocking… But right now, they’re letting things into the backfield more often than they are getting second level blocks.

For now, this is a rude awakening for both Coach DeBoer and the Alabama fan base. The question is going to be – how does he respond, and will the Alabama fans give him slack to respond without turning this into a toxic Auburn-like situation?

It’s not like we have a reputation for unreasonable expectations, or anything.

Roll Tide.