Cecil Hurt
TideSports.com Columnist
OXFORD, Miss. | The Alabama football team has lost games in the past five years, some painfully.
Following many of those losses, the immediate question has been "what will it take for the Crimson Tide to get back in the championship hunt?"
Saturday's questions were different. The loss to Ole Miss, relatively early in the season, could be overcome, but the new question is: Does this Alabama team have enough to avoid two or three more losses? The playoff thoughts still exist in Tuscaloosa - it is Tuscaloosa, after all - but there were more than enough moments in Oxford to raise far deeper concerns than finding a spot in the season-ending four-team extravaganza.
The Crimson Tide, scourge of college football since soon after Saban arrived, has now lost three straight games to ranked opponents. You can make excuses for that - Auburn had a miracle season, Oklahoma cared more than Alabama in the bowl game, winning on the road is tough. But the more the losses accumulate, the less valid the excuses sound.
The fact is that, on Saturday, Ole Miss was the better team. Alabama scored one offensive touchdown. It had a surplus of special team miscues. It gave up three touchdown passes to Bo Wallace in the second half.
There wasn't a single phase of the game Alabama could make a legitimate claim to being better against a team it has historically dominated. That isn't a knock on Ole Miss. Give the Rebels credit for improving their program, for playing hungry and winning a game in the fourth quarter - the things that were Alabama hallmarks over the past few years.
Instead, this Alabama edition is running a negative turnover deficit. It committed costly, untimely penalties from start to finish. Add to that mix that one of the team's most dynamic players, Kenyan Drake, is surely lost for the year, and that the starting center and a starting linebacker are probably questionable at best for the next couple of weeks, and dreams of December suddenly seems less plausible than just surviving October intact.
"We have a lot of things to work on and to fix so that we can become the team we want to become," Nick Saban said after the loss.
That borders on understatement. Yes, expectations are always high at Alabama and maybe they have been too high for a team with a new quarterback and a rebuilding defense. But no one was decrying those expectations two weeks ago, in the wake of a blowout of befuddled Florida. The expectations aren't going away, anyway. They are, for players and coaches at Alabama, a part of the deal. Every year.
Saban also said that "every goal that we have as a team is still in front of us." Fair enough. But the only way to reach those goals is to win games, and that starts with Alabama putting a stop to mistakes - eight penalties, two turnovers, plentiful lapses in concentration - that have put the Crimson Tide in a hole over and over.
Against unranked opposition, Alabama is usually able to muscle its way past those miscues. But when the competition improves and the execution doesn't, results like the one on Saturday happen. And until the corrections come, the results start repeating themselves. And, saying this with all due respect to Saturday's deserving winners, there are better teams than Ole Miss ahead.
But one thing is certain: the first opponent Alabama has to overcome, even before facing Arkansas, is in the mirror.
https://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1688958
TideSports.com Columnist
OXFORD, Miss. | The Alabama football team has lost games in the past five years, some painfully.
Following many of those losses, the immediate question has been "what will it take for the Crimson Tide to get back in the championship hunt?"
Saturday's questions were different. The loss to Ole Miss, relatively early in the season, could be overcome, but the new question is: Does this Alabama team have enough to avoid two or three more losses? The playoff thoughts still exist in Tuscaloosa - it is Tuscaloosa, after all - but there were more than enough moments in Oxford to raise far deeper concerns than finding a spot in the season-ending four-team extravaganza.
The Crimson Tide, scourge of college football since soon after Saban arrived, has now lost three straight games to ranked opponents. You can make excuses for that - Auburn had a miracle season, Oklahoma cared more than Alabama in the bowl game, winning on the road is tough. But the more the losses accumulate, the less valid the excuses sound.
The fact is that, on Saturday, Ole Miss was the better team. Alabama scored one offensive touchdown. It had a surplus of special team miscues. It gave up three touchdown passes to Bo Wallace in the second half.
There wasn't a single phase of the game Alabama could make a legitimate claim to being better against a team it has historically dominated. That isn't a knock on Ole Miss. Give the Rebels credit for improving their program, for playing hungry and winning a game in the fourth quarter - the things that were Alabama hallmarks over the past few years.
Instead, this Alabama edition is running a negative turnover deficit. It committed costly, untimely penalties from start to finish. Add to that mix that one of the team's most dynamic players, Kenyan Drake, is surely lost for the year, and that the starting center and a starting linebacker are probably questionable at best for the next couple of weeks, and dreams of December suddenly seems less plausible than just surviving October intact.
"We have a lot of things to work on and to fix so that we can become the team we want to become," Nick Saban said after the loss.
That borders on understatement. Yes, expectations are always high at Alabama and maybe they have been too high for a team with a new quarterback and a rebuilding defense. But no one was decrying those expectations two weeks ago, in the wake of a blowout of befuddled Florida. The expectations aren't going away, anyway. They are, for players and coaches at Alabama, a part of the deal. Every year.
Saban also said that "every goal that we have as a team is still in front of us." Fair enough. But the only way to reach those goals is to win games, and that starts with Alabama putting a stop to mistakes - eight penalties, two turnovers, plentiful lapses in concentration - that have put the Crimson Tide in a hole over and over.
Against unranked opposition, Alabama is usually able to muscle its way past those miscues. But when the competition improves and the execution doesn't, results like the one on Saturday happen. And until the corrections come, the results start repeating themselves. And, saying this with all due respect to Saturday's deserving winners, there are better teams than Ole Miss ahead.
But one thing is certain: the first opponent Alabama has to overcome, even before facing Arkansas, is in the mirror.
https://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1688958
