Good day and Roll Tide. Alabama managed to get to the SEC Championship Game in Kalen DeBoer’s second year; that has to have some value, but they did very little with it, putting on an embarrassing display in a 28-7 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs.
You’ll have to excuse my being relatively terse today: It was an extremely unpleasant game, but also a pretty simple loss that I don’t think has very much analytical intrigue.
We also now have the context that Alabama did not drop at all in the CFP Rankings and will be going to the Playoffs. So apparently this game did not matter, hence, “whatever.”
Win probability actually did like the Tide in the first part of the first quarter. Alabama’s defense was holding up well, even though its offense couldn’t really do all that much.
Things swung quickly though after Georgia’s first score and then fell even further in the beginning of the second quarter after their next. By midway through the second quarter, it was pretty clear what was going on here: a rout. Georgia just needed to bide their time and close it out.
And no, this wasn’t really a mirage of statistics, like some scoreboard results are. The Georgia Bulldogs benefited from some short fields, a few good early breaks, and some charmed 3rd-and-long conversions; but they were solidly more efficient than Alabama (if slightly less explosive).
In fact, Alabama’s efficiency here, at 29% SR, is terrible. In fact, it’s similar to the Oklahoma efficiencies (28% SR vs. Bama, 29% vs. Mizzou) that I’ve been complaining about in my posts. In those, I call out Oklahoma for skating by with a terrible offense and some lucky bounces. Which, after the last two Alabama games (and in some ways, after the last month of games) is apparently a label I need to start applying to Alabama.
Maybe it’s destiny that these two offense-optional teams are meeting again in the Playoff.
Most of the box score is horrible, as you’d expect, but there are some odd silver linings in there:
- Bama only lagged the Dawgs by 88 total yards. (Short fields and all that, an echo of the Oklahoma loss).
- Ty and his Cursed Crew actually did have more passing yards (212 to 156) than UGA (who decided they didn’t need to pass the ball downfield to do just fine and dandy in this game).
- Bama actually did get 11 first downs to Georgia’s 16. Those are very different numbers in a relatively low-scoring game like this, but it doesn’t look like a “one team got quadruple the points of the other” kind of gap.
- Alabama was slightly more explosive (in part, in my view, due to some shenanigans on that lone scoring drive)
- Alabama was excellent on Penalties. What a weird stat to take from a blowout loss, but Georgia racked up the penalties while Alabama just had a single snap infraction on the day. Zero penalties on defense (again, Stockton didn’t try to throw the ball downfield much).
- Bama held UGA to 6-for-16 on 3rd down (a 37.5% SR). That’s below average, but unfortunately UGA was 2-for-2 on 4th downs, so some of that is wiped away. (The Dawgs always seem to be good on 4th down, with a notable exception being Alabama’s stop in the game earlier this season).
But obviously the other numbers are bad. And in the end, Alabama was only able to muster a game that delivered a 2.5 Game Excitement score, which might be the lowest I’ve seen. (The first game in Athens was a 6.3).
Choo choo, here comes the pain train
Let’s do a lightning round through the bad stuff. (Yes, I’m finding myself doing this two games in a row; um, Roll Tide?)
Alabama actually won on 1st down efficiency and explosiveness. Isn’t that nuts? Because otherwise, the Tide were completely pantsed on every down. 2nd down was basically “might as well spike the ball” territory, and while 3rd downs had a strong chance at explosiveness, that was Ty’s only play.
Alabama has benefitted from some good playcalling (and good luck) on 4th downs this year — and we’ve been rewarded for some timely conversions, including against Auburn — but it did not hold in this one: 1 for 3 on 4th down means “this team lost.”
Alabama didn’t even get into the Red Zone the entire game. Just that weird Germie play (where the ref threw an A+ block to open the outside of the field) gave us a score from outside of the 20’s.
Bama actually tried to run the ball early, but veered hard away from it in the first half, before completing the theme by letting it drift through the 4th quarter. That, folks, is what it looks like when a team is losing for the entire game.
Whoa, actually, this one is weird. It’s nothing new that Georgia converts well from short distance — they tend to, though their loss in Athens was an exception — but putting a 90% SR on any metric category is remarkable, but that conversion rate is just crazy.
And it’s even weirder that the Dawgs actually underperformed Alabama on early downs (both SR and XR). Is this short yardage conversion gap — Dawgs almost perfect, Tide almost a dead body — the ‘real’ key in how this turned into an unexpected blowout? Maybe so.
I don’t want to talk about the rusher’s chart, because it’s sad and I don’t want to be sad. Do you want to be sad? Didn’t think so.
I’ll call out some intrigue from the other player charts, though.
Yeah, so Ty Simpson technically did complete more explosive passes and total successful passes than Gunner Stockton. Great job, Ty! (But, honestly, the defense held Stockton QB to a not-great line here).
Problem is, Ty threw a lot more balls than Gunner did, with a whopping 19 incompletions and 1 interception capping the end of his line. Ugh.
Alabama’s receivers chart looks a lot more sparse than you’d like it to given that volume of passes thrown. (Yep, a lot of incompletions).
But Germie Bernard always seems to find his: his 3 explosives and 2 additional successful catches made him the obvious leader here. Ryan Williams also woke up in the 1st quarter, only to be retired again soon after.
Interestingly, we did get a lot of completions to RB Daniel Hill, which I usually see as a “good” thing, but I think in this game it was more a case of “check-down-itis,” where the QB is scared to throw anything but an easy one to an RB unlikely to break the next tackle. I was very optimistic about Hill when he first started emerging as an unconventional receiver this season, but something seems to have changed.
Our TE group is a mess of injuries, but newbie Marshall Pritchett did catch two, including a successful one. It’s good to know he’s capable, but dang it seems like we’re missing Josh Cuevas.
Isaiah Horton and Lotty Brooks have both shown flashes this year (if in different ways and roles), but neither showed up strong in this one. (I lost count of dropped passes, but I think each of these guys had one, among other teammates).
Well. There was a moment there where, honestly, I was trying to find a silver lining in going to a ‘normal’ bowl game: less time watching this team, which frankly is very painful about 75% of the time; and perhaps an opportunity to see/reward some younger players with playing time in a bowl. (I mean, we need to do some work to keep these kids around).
But, the Committee bailed us out. (Bama and the committee have a real “on and off again” relationship that seesaws roughly annually, have you seen a pattern?).
And, so, honestly, I’ll take what we can get here. A Playoff appearance is an important achievement for this coaching staff, a sought-after opportunity for the players, and honestly a recognition (at least for now) of Strength of Schedule as a critical metric of judgement. Some Tide fans might have been fine with seeing this silly team go to the Crab Legs Bowl or whatever, but the kids we’ve recruited (and are recruiting) want to play for a team that competes in real situations.
So, we’ve got the stage that the team wanted, and against one of the weakest opponents (Oklahoma) in the field. Now Grubb and co. just need to do some soul-searching and figure out how to actually (and not just statistically) win this round. Roll Tide.
