Good morning, y’all. We have begun gathering the animals together two by two. Our belongings are already gathered together in our mobile homes, which will become mobile in a different way if the water continues to rise. TackyToo is about to become a fleet of arks carrying the faithful to a new resting spot. I hope it’s not in Alabama.
Speaking of Alabama, well, I hate to. The game got off to an optimistic start, it was 0 to 0 at kickoff. Things got much worse thereafter, with the final score of 41-24 favoring the unwashed heathens from Tuscaloosa. I don’t know what happened to the mojo yesterday. I was dressed appropriately, the sandwiches were on time, andButtswas in his favorite spot.
In fact, Butts looked like he was ready for a good tussle. The 4:00 kickoff coincides with one of Butts awake periods and he seemed to be really involved in the game. In fact, Butts seemed to be far more involved than the boys in white tonight. It was later in the second quarter that the wheels came off of the cart. The 17 point differential in the game was not as bad as it could have been as the boys from Alabama lost their top receiver for the second half. It looked like “Bama knew they had us at the beginning of the 2nd half and the only question was going to be by how much.
The failure to compete rested mostly with the defense, I believe, with the offense bringing up a close second. I know I can’t give a pass to a defense that allowed 41 points, but I’m willing to cut the boys some slack because they were on the field the whole game. If you stand in front of a road grader for three hours, even Superman is going to give some ground. We are not Supermen, which we proved today, but we may have played him. Bryce Young was on fire and carried the pachyderms on his back to victory.
Let’s start with the offense:
Stetson Bennett became the shaky quarterback that everyone said he was. He was 29 of 48 for 340 yards which sounds like enough to beat anybody. Unfortunately his two interceptions, 1 a pick 6, the other a scoring drive killer, provided the margin of victory for the other team. A 75.5 QBR will not cut it against elite teams.
Running Back U combined for 109 yards on 30 carries. For some reason, ‘Bama found a run defense that was previously not in evidence.
The receiving corps fared better with all universe freshman Brock Bowers contributing 139 yards on 10 catches. His touchdown catch and run was amazing. The rest of the corps chimed in with 201 yards on 29 receptions. There were one or two painful drops in this game, but they are not the whole story.
Special teams did their job. Jack Podlesny was 1 of 1 in the field goal department and hit all of his extra points(3). Jake Carmada punted 4 times for 210 yards, a 52.5 yard average. We had a couple of good run backs of kicks and punts, but no one broke one. I guess we can thank the Gods that Alabama didn’t try an onside kick. Lord knows how that would have turned out on this evening.
Defensively the Dawgs look they had all had intestinal flu for a week, and maybe they had. Something was off and I don’t think that the ‘Bama boys are that much stronger than we are. This is a less talented team offensively for Alabama than they have fielded in recent years. The Alabama offense held the ball for 26 minutes of the game compared to Georgia’s 34. They didn’t need that much time to score, I reckon. Our secondary was exposed as our weak link. Alabama managed 421 yards through the air with a quarterback that was supposedly easily rattled. The chess match between Kirby and Saban was clearly won by Saban.
Well, we’ve backed our way into the CFP by virtue of previously being number 1. Let’s hope Michigan doesn’t watch any of the tapes from this game and learn how to have open receivers all over the field. Could life get any more interesting?
