You all saw what happened yesterday. Alabama went down to Tallahassee, started the game with an encouraging nine minute, 17 play touchdown drive, and then thoroughly imploded. It’s only one game, and plenty of hyped teams have suffered bad losses early on before going on championship runs. Perhaps Florida State turns out to be a really good team, and in November this loss doesn’t look as bad as it does in this moment.
The problem, of course, is that this coaching staff has not earned the benefit of the doubt. Is it possible that they get things turned around and that this season doesn’t turn out as disastrous as it looks today? Sure, but there is no reason for Alabama fans to feel confident in that. Yesterday’s performance just looked like a rerun of the Oklahoma and Michigan games from 2024. Allowing 31 points despite the opponent completing only nine forward passes is flat out embarrassing.
The lack of discipline is still glaring
It felt like an omen when Florida State’s opening drive was extended by a third down defensive holding penalty, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Later in the game when Alabama was trying to claw back, James Smith extended another drive with a personal foul penalty. All told, Alabama finished with 8 penalties for 70 yards, which is something that has plagued the team for the past few seasons. Until those get cleaned up, Alabama is going to have a difficult time reaching its ceiling.
It’s legitimately fair to question whether this coaching staff knows what good looks like
This is perhaps the most concerning issue. One glaring example is Dijon Lee, who clearly was not ready to get thrown into the fire on Florida State’s opening possession following that fateful holding penalty. Throwing the deep ball is not Thomas Castellanos’ forte and that pass wasn’t particularly good, but Lee was beaten so badly that White had plenty of room to adjust and make the diving grab. Kane Wommack had raved about Lee just last week. Ryan Grubb was bullish on an offensive line that was uneven at best in the game. Coaches are always going to express some optimism in the preseason, but this roster looks to have some serious holes, and it’s not clear whether the coaching staff knew it.
Ty was steady and unspectacular, and it wasn’t nearly enough
After turnovers contributed so heavily to last season’s losses, Alabama fans clamored for steadier play from the quarterback position. To his credit, Ty took care of the football yesterday. Unfortunately, his passes only produced an average of 5.9 yards which is rather putrid. There were some drops, and Florida State twice took intentional defensive penalties to prevent home run plays. Ty made some really nice throws in the game and there is reason to have some optimism about him based on that, but it is abundantly clear that Alabama is going to need very good QB play in order to win games this season. That defense and running game will not carry the day against decent teams.
Ryan Williams continues to drop the football
Ryan didn’t look right all game before exiting with a concussion. Playing from the slot, he had the opportunity for several YAC plays with passes that hit him in both hands, and simply did not catch the ball. We now wait to see when he is able to return to action, but whenever it happens he will need to clean up the drops in order to be effective.
Alabama’s linebackers looked slow and confused, and there was still no pass rush
Linebacker wasn’t considered much of a concern for this squad, but they looked terrible. Deontae Lawson appears to be nothing close to full speed, and neither Justin Jefferson nor Nikhal Hill-Green offered much to celebrate. Lawson took a terrible angle and hesitated on Castellanos’ TD run on their opening possession, and failed to cover the wheel route on the explosive third quarter play that led to FSU going up by three scores. It’s tough for a defense to overcome bad linebacker play, and that’s exactly what we saw yesterday.
Tim Keenan was missed, but the depth is apparently nonexistent
Alabama has too many heavily recruited blue chip defensive linemen to give up the running lanes that we saw on Saturday. Freddie Roach has received some criticism in his tenure, and based on what we saw yesterday that heat is only going to get turned up.
Bright spot: The kicking game wasn’t as awful as feared
Conor Talty looked fine. He did miss just short on a 53 yarder, but the ball was well struck and he drilled his other opportunity from 40. He also boomed all of his kickoffs into the end zone. After the last scrimmage, the kicking game was probably the area that Alabama fans were most worried about, but it should be the least of our worries at this point.
We will learn plenty about Kalen DeBoer and staff in the coming weeks. Last season was a transition year, but this year was supposed to be better. The bare minimum expectation should be a College Football Playoff bid, and based on what we saw yesterday that seems like a pipe dream.
Time to get to work, Kalen.
