Learn your emojis.
I'm a licensed psychotherapist as well as a top notch accountant (based on what I've been told here
)
When a team performs as it should against a weaker opponent and it's reflected in the statistical measurements it doesn't disqualify those measurements.
Based on rankings coming out of high school these guys are top five talent. However, it's my view the judgments placed on the defensive performance this season have been off base on several instances with different story lines.
This past week Rashaan Evans was being interviewed about his progression in the league as well as his time working with Saban and he went on to mention while he saw a lot of action in his first two years in Tuscaloosa he wasn't moved to the linebacking corps as his permanent spot in the rotation (every down type of guy) until his junior season. He wasn't ready. He knew it, Saban knew it, and we saw it when he emerged as the player he has become that junior season.
If you were to ask the guys playing linebacker this season they'd tell you "they weren't ready." In other words, they've said such; literally verbatim. We saw guys starting and getting significant minutes that were not ready for D1 play at this level.
Injuries, along with some guys who Bama has missed out in recruiting, are certainly part of this question. The fact this younger guys haven't gone through the "process" of earning their spots on defense is largely overlooked; often blamed on coaching when a lot of that coaching was sidelined due to injury. It's led to, and demonstrated around the 'net consistently, that a lot of the fan base has developed an approach of "if they can't perform in year one or two" they need to be culled.
I've reached the conclusion this discussion has leveled out with the same discussions had about Tua and Jalen. How many were writing him off? More importantly, how often did we see Jalen criticized for things that appeared one way in a cursory, face value approach but in a different light demonstrated a gross misunderstanding of what was going on with the position? Just like the Arkansas and Tennessee examples in this thread we had fans pointing to specific plays with Jalen that were read as badly as a blind man trying to lip read.
Just as one small example here consider ...
The defense was ravaged by injury.
People pointed to tackling with and how it seemingly didn't improve.
With a group ravaged by injury how much live action/tackling are you going to put your guys through in the same situation if you're the coach?
So, we're not seeing improvement in an area where they can't stress that aspect without risking further injury but let's, by all means, fire someone. A team plays the way they practice might be a familiar ring here.
Okay, I lied. Here's another small example. How often did we see comparisons made between Bama defenses of old when the offenses faced then, versus today, are so vastly different?
What are you seeing in these examples here? I seen a lot of rushing to judgment without context. A lot of it I find borderline silly ... almost like ones car running out of gas so they're wanting a new one instead of just filling up the tank. The lack of experience should have been as big of a warning as that little red light that says "low on gas."
