The Vaunted Alabama Defense

the Texans blog, has a post today about how important the rushing attack is to have any chance against the ravens, given all the injuries and such. the evolution of the game is indeed an interesting thing, but the second running offenses go completely extinct, is the second that defenses stop defending against it. and the second that happens, a clever coach will realize it and wreck shop with a running offense. all my opinions no doubt. or also, what goes around comes around

In fact 8 of the 11 FBS teams Bama played this year had offenses ranked #90 or below. Arkansas at #29, LSU at #73, and South Carolina at #75 fared better.

The Alabama SID office claimed a power outage as the reason why the score that day was 4 hours late in coming.

If at 1st you don’t succeed, try try again.

Have you ever seen a team from Arkansas I think they play in Jerry World every now and again

After watching this bowl season, I was starved for a defensive performance. I didn’t necessarily want to see a low scoring game, but wanted a strong defensive display.

Alabama delivered.
I didn’t know linebackers with that much size could move that well. Secondary was very tight too.

I got so fired up, I skipped right over to make my own reply

and using a one off like Utah is like saying that since Boise beat OU in the Fiesta Bowl then Boise is better against any XII team in any year

and then Florida held a team that scored 60 for 5 games straight to only 14. I think most people would say Alabam played terribly in that game.

in one of the last five Cotton Bowls (2008) Big 12-4+2 Missouri beat SEC Arkansas 31-7.

Texas Tech gave it a pretty good shot in 2009 against Ole Miss who “won the game 47–34, in what turned out to be the highest scoring game in front of the largest Cotton Bowl Classic crowd in history.”

2006 Alabama won vs Texas Tech 13-10.

the SEC proposed a +1 in 2008. If they got their way and people didn’t shrug it off, Oklahoma St. would’ve had their chance and given people a chance to see a less boring game.

That always makes for embarrassing football, I cant imagine paying all that money for tickets/travel and your team or at least half of your team doesn’t show up

bottom lines don’t lie. also anyone who knows churchill quotes is smart anyway

Like the agreement that the Big 10 and Pac-Con have just put into place, we should do that with the SEC

Except when they don’t.

38 of the 45 SB champions had top 10 defenses. 5 of the last playoff games that featured a top 10 offense against a top 10 defense (both could be top 5… it’s either 5 or 10) the defensive team has won all 5. I’m not saying offense doesn’t score the points to win, but if defense didn’t exist, every game would be a tie, which is why depending on how good your defense is does a great deal determining the result of the game.

Regarding that link: TLDR, but I got the gist it was trying to make the argument that defense is virtually unnecessary. Both the Patriots and Packers have given up a ton of yards, but they are better than half of the league in points allowed (ranked ~14th & ~15th), and are in the top 3 in takeaways. Let me tell you as a Pats fan, that if NE’s defense didn’t get all those takeaways, they’re 3-13 instead of 13-3 (maybe not entirely, but you get the point).

Now about the Broncos-Steelers game, the reason the Steelers lost were for a couple reasons. The most notable was NOT the injuries, but the defensive game plan. They did not respect Tebow as a deep threat passer, and because of that, they loaded the box with 8-9 man fronts and man-to-man coverage all game, which screams easy deep throws. Deep passes in general are really not difficult, as long as the QB and receiver have a good feel for each other, accuracy isn’t really an issue, simply knowing how far to throw. This really shows as about half of Tebow’s passes were huge gains, a few were intermediate and only a couple were successfully completed short throws. The most latter is the most difficult as you’re dealing with pin-point accuracy and having the ability to read the coverage so fast you understand who is most capable to catch the ball. So in case you didn’t notice, so many of Tebow’s short throws were WAY OFF, hence only 10 completions.

The second issue wasn’t Ben being injured, because he was mostly fine (4 weeks after the initial injury), but the injuries on the offensive/defensive line and more importantly, in the secondary. That should say enough for itself after I explained how Tebow exploited the defensive game plan.

Basically, offense can win games through exploiting the defense, but the best teams, the championship teams, 84.4% of the time have great defenses. It’s a rather simple idea, I mean, people say whoever scores the most points win, but who exactly are the guys getting scored on? The defense. So the saying really should be rephrased to: whichever defense allows to get scored on the least wins.

for you. A team with a top 5 defense just beat a team with a top 5 offense. That’s 6-0 in the last 6 playoff games featuring a top 5/10 defense against a top 5/10 offense.

I’m done.