Cecil Hurt
TideSports.com Columnist
The SEC season starts for Alabama next week. You could call it the real season. The Crimson Tide has played three games and won them, by respectable margins. Nick Saban hasn't lost his temper. The addition of Lane Kiffin hasn't somehow stricken the team incapable of moving the ball. The defense hasn't allowed a touchdown in 10 quarters.
But I still don't think anyone knows a darn thing.
That shouldn't come as a shock. Most teams are in the same shape after three weeks of the season. There is no shame in it, no real reason a team must, before the end of September, be posing for statues or jumping off bridges. In most other outposts of the college football world, that's par for the course.
This is not most other places. Alabama fans crave certainty. They thrive on it. They want to have a mighty offense and the 2011 defense. They do not want the anxiety of wondering whether they will win. They hate mystery. If Sherlock Holmes knocked on the door, they would either punch him in the nose or run screaming out the back door.
They want to be sure they will thrash Florida, and they want to talk about it all week long, on talk radio and at the dinner table and anywhere else the topic arises, which in Alabama means everywhere else, like they did last year, until the last two games slapped them across the face.
So right now, they don't know. Because nobody knows.
Take the quarterback position. Blake Sims is the starter. Even setting aside the strong circumstantial evidence for that proposition - the fact Sims has started every game - it is obvious from the way he has moved the offense, and from the substitution pattern Saban used on Saturday. But how will Sims do against an SEC defense, one with a good secondary and a decent pass rush? No one knows. There isn't enough evidence in three games to be sure.
That doesn't mean people don't have opinions, ranging from confidence to capitulation. There is no certainty. And when there isn't certainty, that is the next thing to doubt, and on any Alabama highway you choose to drive, it isn't a long trip from doubt to despair.
That's fair enough at the quarterback position. Everyone knew AJ McCarron had to be replaced and there was no candidate with experience set to step right in. There were some illusions Jake Coker would hop right off the bus from Tallahassee and immediately be better than McCarron ever was, but those hopes were both unfounded and unfair to Coker. But let's set the quarterback spot aside.
There is still the defense, the foundation and bedrock of Saban's success at Alabama. But how good is it, really? Teams haven't scored that much, but they have made plays and first downs. This isn't the 2011 defense, crammed with first-round draft choices - not in talent and, more importantly, not in experience.
And the running backs? They were supposed to be great and they have been at times, but even Saban was talking about "too much running on the periphery" after Saturday. The only player that has met all expectations has been Amari Cooper, which says a lot, both about Cooper and about expectations.
For some people, the unknown is exciting, like a rush-inducing roller-coaster plunge into the darkness. Some people love a mystery. But at Alabama, it is at best something to be endured (and something that many people thought was a part of the past, as long as Saban was in place and not in Texas.) Florida is the start of a defining stretch, but Alabama enters that stretch with some real questions, and few definitive answers.https://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1681161
TideSports.com Columnist
The SEC season starts for Alabama next week. You could call it the real season. The Crimson Tide has played three games and won them, by respectable margins. Nick Saban hasn't lost his temper. The addition of Lane Kiffin hasn't somehow stricken the team incapable of moving the ball. The defense hasn't allowed a touchdown in 10 quarters.
But I still don't think anyone knows a darn thing.
That shouldn't come as a shock. Most teams are in the same shape after three weeks of the season. There is no shame in it, no real reason a team must, before the end of September, be posing for statues or jumping off bridges. In most other outposts of the college football world, that's par for the course.
This is not most other places. Alabama fans crave certainty. They thrive on it. They want to have a mighty offense and the 2011 defense. They do not want the anxiety of wondering whether they will win. They hate mystery. If Sherlock Holmes knocked on the door, they would either punch him in the nose or run screaming out the back door.
They want to be sure they will thrash Florida, and they want to talk about it all week long, on talk radio and at the dinner table and anywhere else the topic arises, which in Alabama means everywhere else, like they did last year, until the last two games slapped them across the face.
So right now, they don't know. Because nobody knows.
Take the quarterback position. Blake Sims is the starter. Even setting aside the strong circumstantial evidence for that proposition - the fact Sims has started every game - it is obvious from the way he has moved the offense, and from the substitution pattern Saban used on Saturday. But how will Sims do against an SEC defense, one with a good secondary and a decent pass rush? No one knows. There isn't enough evidence in three games to be sure.
That doesn't mean people don't have opinions, ranging from confidence to capitulation. There is no certainty. And when there isn't certainty, that is the next thing to doubt, and on any Alabama highway you choose to drive, it isn't a long trip from doubt to despair.
That's fair enough at the quarterback position. Everyone knew AJ McCarron had to be replaced and there was no candidate with experience set to step right in. There were some illusions Jake Coker would hop right off the bus from Tallahassee and immediately be better than McCarron ever was, but those hopes were both unfounded and unfair to Coker. But let's set the quarterback spot aside.
There is still the defense, the foundation and bedrock of Saban's success at Alabama. But how good is it, really? Teams haven't scored that much, but they have made plays and first downs. This isn't the 2011 defense, crammed with first-round draft choices - not in talent and, more importantly, not in experience.
And the running backs? They were supposed to be great and they have been at times, but even Saban was talking about "too much running on the periphery" after Saturday. The only player that has met all expectations has been Amari Cooper, which says a lot, both about Cooper and about expectations.
For some people, the unknown is exciting, like a rush-inducing roller-coaster plunge into the darkness. Some people love a mystery. But at Alabama, it is at best something to be endured (and something that many people thought was a part of the past, as long as Saban was in place and not in Texas.) Florida is the start of a defining stretch, but Alabama enters that stretch with some real questions, and few definitive answers.https://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1681161
