In October, Alabama coach Nick Saban finally waved the white flag.
The longtime defensive connoisseur had seen enough. The idea that “defense wins championships”, much to Saban’s dismay, is a relic of college football’s past.
“In the past, a good defense won a good attack,” said Saban before a victory over Tennessee. “A good defense doesn’t beat a good attack anymore.”
And although the six-time national champion grudgingly accepted this reality – and adapted his team to an offensive steamroller – the Crimson Tide still
And on Monday night at the National College Football Playoff Championship Presented by AT&T, the Alabama defense will take its toughest test of the season in the mighty Ohio state.
Justin Fields. Chris Olave. Trey Sermon. Garrett Wilson.
“They have a lot of weapons,” said Alabama defensive coordinator Pete Golding. “This is [not] a game [where] you come in and say, ‘Hey, I just stopped this guy, let’s win the game’. That is not the case. “
How well Alabama slows down the Buckeyes will play a key role in Monday’s result.
This is not an exclusive defense of Nick Saban.
The dramatic offensive change in college football swept Alabama as well. Take the BCS Saban national championship team as an example.
That season – which included a 9-6 loss in the LSU overtime in “Game of the Century” – Alabama’s best-ranked defense was stifling. The Crimson Tide allowed tiny 178.7 yards per game for opponents of the Power 5 conference, 3.3 yards per game and 7.8 points per game.
This season, Alabama has given up almost double the yards (353.2 yards per game), five yards per game and 19 points per game. In eight of its 12 games this season, Crimson Tide has given more yards than the 2011 average in
This is less an accusation of Bama’s defensive performance and more indicative of how the game has changed – for everyone.
“It’s not about how many meters you give up,” said Ohio State coach Ryan Day on Thursday.
“It’s all about getting stops … You can let them drive the length of the field, but if they kick the goals or you have turns along the way, good things will happen.”
The figures illustrate the sport’s offensive increase. Since 2011, the national average yards per game against the Power 5 conference teams has gone from 376.3 yards to 403.5 in 2020. Yards per game has risen from 5.4 to 5.7 and the score has gone up more than two points – from 26 points per game to 28.9.
“I don’t think there is any doubt about the fact that college football has changed dramatically in the past 10, 12 years,” said Saban this week.
“I think the advent of propagation, RPOs, lower field blocking when passes are caught behind the line of scrimmage, all of those things have dramatically changed the style of offensive play and it affects all parts of the game.
“You have to defend the way you choose players to play certain positions because the game is much more of a perimeter game now than it used to be, and what is your scheme for defending that kind of change has been quite dramatic.”
Although Tide’s defense is more tolerant now than before, it is still at the top tier of the sport. It is the fifth national in allowed points (19) and yards allowed per game (5) and the 17th national in yards allowed per game (353.2).
In other words, despite the yardage totals, he usually gets the stops he needs.
Although good, Alabama’s defense has been thwarted a few times this season. Two games stand out: October 10 against Ole Miss and the SEC championship game against Florida.
The 48 points the rebels scored are tied with Auburn for the maximum that any team scored against Alabama in the Saban era. Ole Miss’ 647 yards was the maximum Crimson Tide has allowed. Saban and linebacker Dylan Moses opined that night whether the Rebels coach and former Saban Lane assistant Kiffin knew his signals, something Kiffin later denied.
This week, Saban and Golding attributed the fights to a myriad of factors.
“They had 250 yards after contact,” said Golding. “It’s hard to win at any level when you do that. … I think we also had 28 mental mistakes in that game.”
Said Saban, citing four of the five new entrants in high school and three freshmen in defense: “The knowledge and experience we had was probably not what we needed to be able to make adaptations and adjustments in the game and also in preparation”.
Florida’s 46-point burst in the SEC title game was the second most allowed by a Saban-trained Alabama defense. Golding deplored Alabama’s performance in the third defeat (the Gators converted 8 of 11 opportunities) there, and emphasized that Tide must be better against Ohio State – an attack that is more explosive than the two teams Alabama fought against. .
Mental errors must be “small in number”, running attacks must be solid and Tide must “attack in space,” said Golding.
“You can’t give these guys these moves,” said Golding of the Buckeyes. “They will play very contested plays because they have a lot of really good players.”
Despite all the concern about these performances, Alabama’s defense for the past two months has been good. Tide allowed 17 points or less, below 300 passing yards and less than five yards per move in seven of the last eight games. In the College Football Playoff semifinal against Notre Dame, Alabama allowed only 14 points and 4.7 yards per play, although it was not as good as Golding would have liked on the third downs (8 of 16).
The team assigns added gaming experience to the improvement.
“We learned from experience what we need to do,” said cornerback Patrick Surtain II. “We get better every week, flying towards the ball, making adjustments and learning from previous games in which we fought.”
Ohio state offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson agrees.
“The Ole Miss game was early and … I think Alabama got better because they were able to play [more games]”, he said.” They are a great defense with talent, length. They are going to make this incredibly challenging. “
Ohio will be Alabama’s biggest challenge yet.
The Buckeyes are the team with the highest score that Alabama will have faced (43.4 points per game), and have run for more than 200 yards in each of the seven games this season, tied by the longest active streak on the FBS.
Sermon boosted the racing game recently, averaging 212 yards and 9.1 yards per pass in the last three Buckeyes competitions.
Fields, a true double threat defender – the guy who has given Saban’s defenses trouble in the past – is among the best in the country. And Olave and Wilson provide him with a super talented receptionist. Olave has five touchdown receptions for pitches of 25 or more aerial yards this season, mostly tied in Power 5. Surtain said Olave’s speed is a challenge: “He creates a quick split at the top of his routes. … He is also very patient and fluid with his route running. “
Because of the Buckeyes’ firepower, Golding believes the turnaround will be the key.
“Ohio State is averaging 43 [points] – and when they don’t, it’s because they turned the ball, “said Golding.” It is not because people stopped them, it is because they made a mistake. … I think it is a critical piece for this game. “
Clemson, who is in a talent stratosphere similar to Alabama, was dominated by the Buckeyes. Ohio State averaged 8.9 yards per move and ended up with a total of 639 in its 49-28 win. Ohio State turned the ball just once.
But the Buckeyes said that this Alabama defense looks like the video part.
“They are the type of group that never makes a mistake in terms of what difference they should be in,” said Ohio state center Josh Myers. “If they’re in a blitz, nobody gets in the way … I’ve been watching a lot of movies about them and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them once.”
Kevin Wilson said: “[Our offensive line is] they’re going to have their strongest test on Monday night with the Alabama front because they’re the best we’ve ever seen. “
Saban and Golding praised Day’s insight and Golding said the mix of backgrounds and times makes the Buckeyes a challenge.
“He does a very good job of handling things by training,” said Golding. “They do a lot of different things in the same group of people.”
Just as Alabama’s defense changed with college football, so did its attack. Tide is the second team with the highest score in the country (48.2 points per game), and its transformation into an explosive unit meant that Saban’s defense was no longer required to close the teams. Mac Jones, Najee Harris and DeVonta Smith are likely to do their part on Monday.
Still, Tide’s defense has a difficult challenge ahead. If Ohio is to be slowed down on Monday, it will boil down to several key factors, Golding said: cope well with space, force Buckeyes to go over obvious, execute on third falls and generate losses.
Regardless of the number of yards, Alabama must simply make stops.
“The main thing is that the big teams do whatever it takes to win every week, and that’s what the defense does,” said Kevin Wilson. “And that is what coach Saban has done as well as anyone who has coached football.”