DAWGS-TIDE: Rushing game could be key to who wins

Najee Harris and the Alabama Crimson Tide will face a stiff defense in Georgia this Saturday at Bryant-Denny Stadium. (Alabama Media Relations)

By TIM GAYLE

Several of the Alabama defenders were still in diapers the last time an opponent had two running backs rush for more than 100 yards against the Crimson Tide defense. 

In fact, it had never happened in Nick Saban’s previous 182 games as a Crimson Tide coach before Snoop Conner (128) and Jerrion Ealy (120) did it on Saturday night in Oxford, Miss. The last time it happened to a Crimson Tide defense?  it was Dec. 31, 2004 in the Music City Bowl against the Minnesota tandem of Marion Barber III (187 yards) and Laurence Maroney (105).

“As a defense, you never want to see an offense put up those types of numbers, especially when you prepare all throughout the week,” Alabama sophomore linebacker Christian Harris said. “We missed tackles, of course, and that bothers us. They ran on us like crazy. That’s something we really harp on, stopping the run.”

It used to be a stat Alabama statisticians kept up with. Three Alabama opponents – Ole Miss, Houston and Arkansas – had 100-yard rushers in Saban’s first season in 2007, but over the next 10 years only 10 rushers were able to crack the century mark against the vaunted Tide defense. In 2016, to offer a comparison, only two teams rushed for more than 100 yards against the Tide.

Then, the Tide’s rushing defense began to wilt. In 2018, Arkansas, The Citadel, Louisiana-Lafayette and Oklahoma all had 100-yard rushers. In 2019, four more (South Carolina, Ole Miss, LSU and Auburn) had players with more than 100 yards rushing. And, yet, in Saban’s 182 games as a Crimson Tide coach, only 21 rushers had achieved the goal before two more names were added to the list on Saturday.

“I just feel like it’s more communication,” Alabama senior linebacker Dylan Moses said. “Our defense is really good. We have a lot of great players on our side of the D. We just have to communicate from one side of the field to the other.”

The biggest game of the season has arrived as second-ranked Alabama battles third-ranked Georgia at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday. Alabama is a six-point favorite to beat the Bulldogs, but the focus isn’t on either offense. The question is whether Alabama’s once-famous defense can live up to its past tradition. 

In the last 10 quarters, opponents have scored 15 times and punted just four times in 29 possessions. In three games this season, Alabama has held the opposing team to three plays and a punt just twice.

“Of course, we’ve got to get better, mainly working on tackling,” Harris said. “Honestly, I feel like as long as we focus on executing the (game) plan and making tackles, I think we’ll be fine. If you look back on it, a lot of the tackles, if we would have made them, they probably would have ended up punting the ball. When you miss tackles, you’re letting them create more plays, you’re staying on the field for a longer time. If we focus on making tackles and not missing as many as we did, we’ll get off the field and be better as a defense.”

Alabama fans blame the defensive coordinator, Pete Golding, now in his second year of directing a sub-standard Tide defense. The Crimson Tide once was famous for bringing blitzes, but those coordinators moved on to other jobs, such as Georgia head coach Kirby Smart. The last two years, Alabama hasn’t blitzed nearly as much and relied more on disguising its coverages, but those attempts haven’t worked through the first three weeks. Clearly, something else is needed for Alabama to be more effective on defense.

“I don’t think the (defensive coordinator’s) call is necessarily the issue,” Saban said. “I think the execution of the call has been the issue. Sometimes we coach players for what we want them to be, but we really need to coach them for what they are. When I say that, I’m talking about how much experience do they have? How much can they handle? How much can they execute?”

It takes 11 players playing together, Saban said, in an explanation that sounds more like a tired excuse than a problem that can be corrected.

“It only takes one guy to make a mistake,” he said, “and when everybody gives it a ‘my bad’ one time, that’s eleven mistakes. Well, that can be a lot of yards. And, you know, we’ve had some guys that have made multiple mistakes and we either have to get it fixed or replace them and we’re going to work, in every endeavor, to get better. Believe me, no one is satisfied with the way we played.”

Smart, like Saban, is a secondary coach by heart who has spent all of his life working on the defensive side of the ball, so he could care less about Alabama’s struggles on defense. His focus this week has been on the nation’s pass efficiency leader, Tide quarterback Mac Jones, leader of the nation’s top-rated scoring offense.

“They’re extremely physical and extremely big,” Smart said. “What’s made them succeed (on offense) well is players. They’ve got really good players. ‘Sark’ (offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian) does a great job of implementing a system that the kids can execute. It’s based on hard guys to cover outside, they’ve got probably the best back in the country … and they’re massive up front. They’re not built like some of these teams that go tempo the whole time. They can go tempo and they do tempo well, but they’re really big, they can take shots down the field with the explosive wideouts they have, they make you defend the entire field.”
Smart doesn’t want to get in a track meet with the Tide offense, although he believes his defense will slow Jones a bit and his offense can be quite efficient at times.

“When we execute, we’re hard to stop,” Smart said. “When we don’t execute, we go backwards. It’s that simple. Everybody wants to make it about this or that, but if the guy has the right split and the guy does the motion right and we block it right, (quarterback) Stetson (Bennett) is accurate and he finds people. When we block it the correct way up front, we move people and get movement … and have success. When we don’t move people, we don’t.”

To keep Georgia from moving Alabama defenders all over the field, the Tide defense is going to have to force more three and outs, which means being in the right place and tackling the ball carrier.

“We didn’t tackle very well in the last game,” Saban said. “We had missed assignments and (missed) tackling, probably the two things that were the biggest detriment for us in terms of the way we played defense. And I think those are fundamental things that you have to fix. I think when players press, they actually can get worse at those things. They’ve got to play relaxed and confident and that comes from very good preparation. And that’s what we need to do a better job of.”