Tide had a Clemson-sized hangover
TUSCALOOSA | It was a lovely week in Happy Land, a carefree combination of vacation and celebration spent basking in the warming sun of ESPN attention and the soothing shores of the Sports Illustrated cover, listening with contentment to the music of praise and accolades.
But it was back to the real world Saturday night, perhaps with a touch of the Clemson hangover.
It wasn’t that pleasant, just as Nick Saban warned everyone who would listen last week. Saban knew that completely dominant performances like the one that Alabama put on against Clemson aren’t easy to replicate week in and week out, particularly when a team relies on as many young players as Alabama puts on the field.
It was Saban’s analogy last week about “making a B on the mid-term” that rang most truly in the Tide’s 20-6 win over Tulane on Saturday night. If the “B” grade he assigned to the Clemson performance seemed like the harsh grade of a crusty professor, then the “D” grade he mentioned as the unwanted sequel seemed just about right for the Tide’s performance against Tulane.
Aesthetically, it might have been lower than that, but you don’t give an “F” to a team when the scoreboard is on its side.
In the language of Forbes magazine, a bit of a market correction took place on Saturday night. That doesn’t mean that the optimists who went all bullish on Crimson Tide Preferred stock in the wake of the Clemson win now need to sell it off at fire-sale prices. Alabama is still a good team with a 2-0 record and a bright future. But it is not an unstoppable football machine, by any means. Julio Jones and Terrance Cody and the other young names that were enshrined among Alabama’s football immortals after one game had a tougher time on Saturday night. It’s no surprise.
It should have been easy for anyone to see that Alabama would be affected by not having Andre Smith in the lineup. There aren’t any first-team All-Americans sitting around on Alabama’s second team. Add in the injuries that sidelined Marlon Davis and, for at least a half of the game, Javier Arenas and Leigh Tiffin, and the recipe for trouble was there. (Had Arenas’ absence been for the full game, and not just the second half, things might have been far worse than they were.)
It was hard for people to see, when looking through the rose-colored glasses that the Clemson win planted squarely in everyone’s field of vision. That victory swept away a lot of doubts, but a good many legitimate concerns got swept away at the same time. Depth is one of those concerns, as it always has been.
That’s not to blame everything on injuries. Disrupted offensive line or not, John Parker Wilson did not have one of his better games, a fact he affirmed in the post-game comments. Some of the Crimson Tide freshmen played like freshmen.
There were some positives on Saturday night. The Tulane offense ran up a decent amount of yardage, but, overall, Alabama’s defensive effort was good. It also bears remembering that the last time an Alabama team wrestling with its own emotions faced a big underdog from Louisiana, the result was last year’s Louisiana-Monroe debacle. This year’s result was an ugly win. There’s still a world of difference.
The short-term goal is for Alabama to improve on offense. Smith’s return at a still-unspecified date will help. So will additional work.
There have been Alabama teams in the past that have survived, even thrived, with a punt returner and a defense and precious little else. See the 1991 team. It never seemed likely that any Alabama kick returner would deserve to be mentioned with the illustrious David Palmer, but Arenas’ accomplishments speak for themselves, and make their case convincingly. That is, however, a risky formula success, even if one sets aside the fact that the 2008 defense isn’t as formidable as the 1991 defense, at least not yet.
None of this surprised Saban. He saw the potential for just such a contest. He saw a possible letdown, if that’s what you want to call it.
No one connected with Alabama wanted to leave Happy Land. It would have been wonderful for the Georgia Dome euphoria to last all year long, if you’re a Crimson Tide supporter. But that’s not the way the real world works. The best you can hope for, especially if you aren’t one of the super-rich — which Alabama isn’t in talent terms, at least not yet — is this. You reach that point, then you work hard, get healthy and hope you get to return to the good times. That will have to be the Alabama formula for the next several weeks.
