Cecil Hurt
TideSports.com Columnist
Run the football. Stop the run defensively. Protect the football. Take the football away defensively.
"The same things win that have always won," as Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant has intoned on the University of Alabama's pregame video for y ears now. You run, and you stop the run.
Teams now are running the football. Statistics will tell you that. Numbers released by the NCAA on Monday reveal that, in 2014, teams had the highest average gain per rush in history (4.46 yards per attempt.) The average rushing yardage per team per game was 176 yards, the highest it has been since 1979.
Coaches will tell you that, too. Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart was straightforward about that on Sunday.
"Don't make a mistake about it," Smart said in his annual preseason media visit. "Auburn and Ohio State are not spread football teams. They run the ball right at you. They are very physical at the (point of) attack."
The point isn't that teams are running with brute power, like the Nebraska teams under Tom Osborne. The game is in a transitional phase because it is always in a transitional phase. The natural reaction, though, is for people to assume that the current transition is an upheaval of things as they have always been.
Instead, it's part of a long-running cycle in which offenses look for ways to score and defenses react in an attempt to stop them. The same thing happened in the early 1970s, when teams like Alabama and Oklahoma went to the wishbone and put up staggering rushing numbers. Over time, though, defenses figured out how to stop (or limit) triple-action offenses, and recruited the kind of athletes that could do it. Offenses adapted, defenses responded and the cycle goes on.
What's tough for Alabama fans is that they didn't want any transition. Why would they? They want, quite rightly, for things to freeze right where they were in 2009 and 2011.
Those Alabama defenses were built perfectly to stop the run, in the way that most teams tried to run the football. No one could outmuscle them at the line. They weren't unbeatable, but the odds were always in their favor.
But, logically, the other teams in America didn't just sit back and concede the advantage. They built and planned differently.
Alabama is reacting, in its recruiting and its strategy. That takes time, just as it took time for defenses to catch up to the wishbone, or Steve Spurrier's fun-and-gun, or the various other successful offenses. Alabama's roster is being reshaped. So is its philosophy. Alabama should see better defensive numbers this season - but it is not going to see 2009 numbers.
For one thing, that would run counter to the national trend. In other words, no one else is going to put up those numbers against quality opposition and a steady diet of NFL athletes, which Alabama faces in the SEC. Second, the SEC offenses are homogenized. Different teams do different things.
To have optimal success, then, Smart and Nick Saban are just rebuilding and reprogramming one defense. Essentially, they are having to build two, then have the flexibility to use both as needed. Alabama will get there - but it's still going to take some time.
https://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1791433
TideSports.com Columnist
Run the football. Stop the run defensively. Protect the football. Take the football away defensively.
"The same things win that have always won," as Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant has intoned on the University of Alabama's pregame video for y ears now. You run, and you stop the run.
Teams now are running the football. Statistics will tell you that. Numbers released by the NCAA on Monday reveal that, in 2014, teams had the highest average gain per rush in history (4.46 yards per attempt.) The average rushing yardage per team per game was 176 yards, the highest it has been since 1979.
Coaches will tell you that, too. Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart was straightforward about that on Sunday.
"Don't make a mistake about it," Smart said in his annual preseason media visit. "Auburn and Ohio State are not spread football teams. They run the ball right at you. They are very physical at the (point of) attack."
The point isn't that teams are running with brute power, like the Nebraska teams under Tom Osborne. The game is in a transitional phase because it is always in a transitional phase. The natural reaction, though, is for people to assume that the current transition is an upheaval of things as they have always been.
Instead, it's part of a long-running cycle in which offenses look for ways to score and defenses react in an attempt to stop them. The same thing happened in the early 1970s, when teams like Alabama and Oklahoma went to the wishbone and put up staggering rushing numbers. Over time, though, defenses figured out how to stop (or limit) triple-action offenses, and recruited the kind of athletes that could do it. Offenses adapted, defenses responded and the cycle goes on.
What's tough for Alabama fans is that they didn't want any transition. Why would they? They want, quite rightly, for things to freeze right where they were in 2009 and 2011.
Those Alabama defenses were built perfectly to stop the run, in the way that most teams tried to run the football. No one could outmuscle them at the line. They weren't unbeatable, but the odds were always in their favor.
But, logically, the other teams in America didn't just sit back and concede the advantage. They built and planned differently.
Alabama is reacting, in its recruiting and its strategy. That takes time, just as it took time for defenses to catch up to the wishbone, or Steve Spurrier's fun-and-gun, or the various other successful offenses. Alabama's roster is being reshaped. So is its philosophy. Alabama should see better defensive numbers this season - but it is not going to see 2009 numbers.
For one thing, that would run counter to the national trend. In other words, no one else is going to put up those numbers against quality opposition and a steady diet of NFL athletes, which Alabama faces in the SEC. Second, the SEC offenses are homogenized. Different teams do different things.
To have optimal success, then, Smart and Nick Saban are just rebuilding and reprogramming one defense. Essentially, they are having to build two, then have the flexibility to use both as needed. Alabama will get there - but it's still going to take some time.
https://alabama.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1791433
