Our run game was pretty productive against SC, relative speaking vs the rest of the conference, as a percentage of our total offensive production. Alabama against Missouri apparently wasn’t as successful running the football relative to their investment in their run game. Missouri had no answer for the Tide’s passing attack.
South Carolina had difficulty running the ball against us but did enjoy some success through the air, perhaps owing to our shuffling of assignments in the back end and missing some guys. Pruitt has pointed out at least 2 calls where he overrode Ansley’s call for the defense, both times he said it turned out to be a mistake. I think Ansley said during camp that the secondary this year would be the strength of our defense so I expect the most improvement in that group going forward. jmo.
Missouri against Alabama, like South Carolina against us, had to rely on their passing game to try to move the football. The thing about that is from what I understand they’re trying to run somewhat of an option offense. In any event the average depth of throw by Robinson was only 4.52 yards. Their board says he was running for his life the entire game so it makes sense to get rid of the ball asap.
While Missouri has a new HC and OC they kept the DC from the prior staff. Guarantano has a career high performance in terms of passing yards on the road against them last year but it still ended up as a 4 point win.
We obviously all only have one game in the books so it may be a bit too early to figure what every team’s identity is. We can probably do that with some but for others I don’t know. Everyone in the league is expecting “the most improvement from week 1 to week 2”. That improvement is generally almost entirely about familiarity with the scheme and maybe getting some guys back who weren’t available in week 1. Whatever talent, speed, strength, etc., a team started with isn’t likely to change from week to week in a given year. jmo.
The strength of our team this year is supposed to be our defense and for now I still think it will be. Some people close to the program were projecting a score of the SC game to be something like 31-10, including Atlanta. Well we got our 31 but gave up 27. I think that gets fixed. jmo.
I may try to update these tables each week to see how team identities change from week to week given the changing weekly matchups. I mean, the Pirate didn't even try to run the ball against LSU. It will be interesting to see how long that can continue. Also A&M's offense against Vandy was polar opposites. I'm not sure what's going on there but if Mond isn't more productive against Saban this week that game may turn into a bloodbath.. jmo.
