🏈 Smart Sees Ways To Improve Against Hurry Up

[CollegeFootballNews.com]

When Alabama Defensive Coordinator Kirby Smart took his turn with sports reporters Sunday, it was no surprise that much of the conversation revolved around the difficulty the Crimson Tide had last year with some of the hurry-up offenses, particularly in a close win at Texas A&M and a close loss at Auburn.

Although most analyses of Alabama football this year point to the Crimson Tide not facing the two teams expected to be best in the Southeastern Conference Eastern Division (South Carolina and Georgia), Smart pointed out that the difficulty the Bama defense faces is that it plays against different type offensive teams.

Smart said, “We want to be able to beat LSU in our league, Auburn in our league,Texas A&M, good teams in our league, especially our side, that challenge you. So you’ve got to have enough players so that you can play every kind of style of football.

“And that, obviously, is what our goal is. Our No. 1 goal this fall camp is to improve on that. And there’s a lot of ways to improve on that whether it’s being in shape, cutting weight, play more snaps, play more people. So you’ve got to have more depth.

“There’s a lot of things we can do to hopefully improve on that and try to play those style of offenses better.”

Last year Alabama gave up 628 yards and 42 points at Texas A&M, where Johnny Manziel was attempting to repeat his upset of the Crimson Tide. Fortunately, he was intercepted twice -- once in the end zone by Cyrus Jones and once by Vinnie Sunseri, who returned it 73 yards for a touchdown. Additionally, Alabama put up 568 yards of offense and had 49 points.

Alabama won the offensive statistics numbers at Auburn, the Tide getting 495 yards of offense to the Tigers’ 393, but Bama’s offense allowed an 83-yard scoring drive in the final moments before the special teams gave up a 100-yard missed field goal teturn for a winning score as time expired.

Against another hurry up team, Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl, Bama again had better total offense (516 yards to 429), but suffered five turnovers in a 45-31 loss.

Against good teams with more traditional offenses, LSU (284 yards) and Mississippi State (197 yards), the Bama defense performed well. Ole Miss was a hurry up team, but Rebels quarterback Bo Wallace had an injured arm and the Tide held Mississippi to only 205 yards in a 25-0 win.

Clearly the problem for Bama was facing good teams with fast-paced offenses.

Smart pointed out, “It’s definitely challenging because you don’t face that kind of offense daily. It’s not really who we are offensively, so you spend time, obviously simulating that in different ways, whether it’s the scout team or your offense.

“But you can never simulate it as good as a hurry-up team that traditionally does this well. So you’ve got to practice that.”

Alabama must also recruit players to go against that type offense.

Tide Head Coach Nick Saban had pointed out that the Tide recognized that in landing some different type big men for up front positions – “quick twitch” players he calls them. Men like A'Shawn Robinson, Jarran Reed, Da'Shawn Hand, and D.J. Pettway are big men, but with great explosiveness to attack offenses.

Smart said, “We try to go get the best football players we can regardless of size -- the type guy we’re looking for.”

Interestingly, there is an upward flow. Many high schools have switched to the zone read type offenses that rely on hurry up for success. That also means high school defensive players are seeing more of that offense, albeit not at the same speed they will see at the SEC level.

Smart said, “It’s a different speed, but they’re more and more ready because they see it more and more themselves. It’s a trickle-down effect, so what they’re seeing in the high schools is what we’re seeing. Their defensive coordinators, a lot of them are really good high school coaches, they do are the same things that we do. We go meet with them, they come meet with us, we share ideas. So those guys are going through the same process that we do here, but it’s probably not at the same tempo they face here. But I do agree that every year our freshmen are closer and closer to (being) ready to play, and lot more of them are coming mid-year. So they’ve got 15 practices under their belt. It’s probably a lot easier to do that now than it was, say, 10 years ago.”

As a bottom line, Smart said he is “really excited about the group that we’ve got to work with. They’re full of energy, a lot of young guys out there competing. Obviously we’ve got to show some improvement, especially after the last two games last year. I’m really proud of where the guys are headed so far. Seems to be a little bit of a chip-on-their-shoulder type attitude.

“I think we have more depth if we can avoid some injures in some spots. We’ll have more youth, but we’ll also have more depth at a lot of positions (where) we didn’t have that last year. I really think that’s key in college football these days — having depth, playing more players, keeping guys fresh.

“We’ve got a long way to go. But where we can go I’m really enthused about the group we’ve got.”

Bamamag reports...

 

[bamaraider]

Against A&M, it was just a matter of bad coverage and Mike Evans literally having the game of his life. Auburn, lots of things. Mental errors, inconsistent NG play, bad reads by Hubbard, and 3rd down defense. It'll be interesting to see this year, because Alabama is supposed to have a much better front 7, but the CB's are still going to be inexperienced.

 

[TerryP]

A few thoughts off the top of my head:

"Against good teams with more traditional offenses, LSU (284 yards) and Mississippi State (197 yards), the Bama defense performed well. Ole Miss was a hurry up team, but Rebels quarterback Bo Wallace had an injured arm and the Tide held Mississippi to only 205 yards in a 25-0 win."

But Rebels quarterback Bo Wallace had an injured arm? This is one of those "Hold up" moments. It's true that Wallace had shoulder issues. But let's not forget a week following the Bama game Wallace threw for over 330 yards against Auburn, followed by 300+ against A&M, and almost 350 against LSU.

Am I supposed to buy that an arm injury is what led to the Bama defense having a good day against Ole Miss? Wallace certainly didn't have any issues when he stated that the Rebels could put up points on Bama. He certainly didn't use his arm issue as an "if" statement when claiming they had a better receiving corps than A&M.

@bamaraider Just my opinion, but I think it's a pretty solid one. Evans was our Achilles heel last season. He had a better game against Auburn.

Now, this is more of a question for everyone.

At what point do we stop saying "our secondary is inexperienced?" Does it require a certain number of starts? Playing in a certain number of games? Is it a case of when they make mistakes, it's inexperience, but when they don't it's different?

Case in point, Eddie Jackson. He was beaten one time against Ole Miss (Moncrief I believe) and having a corner get beaten at least once in a game is going to happen regardless of experience in our system. Man coverage leads to that.

We don't call Collins inexperienced. He played in all 13 games, started 10 (maybe nine, I'd have to look.) We are labeled as having one returning starter in our secondary but Jarrick Williams played in 12, started nine. But he's not considered a returning starter and Landon is?!?

Jackson only played in seven games and started over half of them. Jackson had an "ethic" problem, for lack of a better expression. If you recall, Saban specifically mentioned how his intensity would be up for one game, down for another.

Maurice Smith only started one game, but played in 12.
Slyve, eight games starting three.
Cyrus Jones played in 11 games and started half of them—five to be exact.
Geno played in 12 of 13 games though I don't believe he recorded a start.
Nick Perry? Senior, but he only played in two games last year.

I'm seeing eight guys there with five of them playing in roughly 85%, or more, of our games.

Inexperienced? Honestly, I'm starting to hear that and remember Tuberville always calling his team young.

 

[Crimson&WhiteGecko]

Anybody who was paying attention to the secondary rotation changes throughout the season can easily see that the depth is much more rooted than most secondaries. This certainly presented challenges, as the last 2 games clearly exploited. Call me naïve but I just trust CNS on this & now that Smart is back coaching these guys as well. Plus considering the challenges they face in offensive competition every day... I am not worried one bit about this.

 

[Nothing_But_A_Winner00]

I can't help but think of Milliner in 2010 vs 2011 and be excited about the corners

 

[sean]

as long as our guys can stop the opposing offenses from making too many explosive plays and keep the qb contained, i think we'll be ok.

i don't see any of our opponents this season as having a qb like manziel, one who could turn a broken play into a td, so hopefully that won't be a huge concern this season. but there's always the x factor. a backup could come in for an injured starter and just run all over us because we never saw any film on him due to him being a backup.

 

[rammerjammer]

Phil Steele said it this morning on the radio. Same mantra as Saban......consistency. If we can trust our corners in man to man, then that frees up the likes of Collins and Nick/Geno to help in run support.

Terry has beat that drum for years about corners getting beat periodically. It is so true, it will happen, but if we can keep that to a minimum......we'll be ok.

 

[riz]

Smart said, “We try to go get the best football players we can regardless of size -- the type guy we’re looking for.”

Unless Saban has changed his whole philosophy in the last year, that's a completely false statement. Saban has size requisites, measurables, for every position he recruits. Jimbo Fisher has echoed this on many occasions and does the exact same thing.