Considering we are a missed field goal away from winning in Athens, and a bad day coaching in Tuscaloosa, we've done quite well. Three distinct drives Saturday, and that game is literally a probable win for us. Bama did not beat us outright by any stretch of the imagination. That was not a whooping. We tossed that game, and it still took them till about 6 minutes to put it away for sure. As bad as we played, we were still in that game the whole way. The emergence of Simpson is the only reason Bama is not a 3 loss team at this point. But SEC football is weird. They could replay that game in Athens for the next 6 weeks and lose all of them.
IMO, yes we are overachieving. I for one was predicting 10-2, but knew 9-3 was very possible and still be a successful season. But, our shortfalls do rear up. And we are thin at WR which is why I think Matthews is still getting the nod. We moved the ball quite easily Saturday in totality. Our discipline and stone hands killed a solid 3-4 potential scoring drives. Plus the pick 6, and a 3 penatly defensive effort gave them an extra 14. Just those two and it's a 3 point game to overcome ot tied because that was a 17 point swing. Passing on 3 to give them 7, and 3 15 yard penalties to keep them alive and score. And a botched 15 yard loss for a 25 yard 1st down run and eventual score. That's 21-24 points right there before you critique the rest of the offensive misses on positive drives. That's the hard pill for that loss. We didn't lose from being outmanned, even with all our injuries. We didn't give up. We lost on attention to dtail, and tackling, which is attention to detail.
I shudder to think what we'd be if we still had a QB that can't throw for more than 180.