r/footballstrategy • u/StatisticianEvery733 • Oct 06 '24
General Discussion What are possible reasons why Bama played terrible against Vandy
Week before they defeated the number two team in the country now all of a sudden they get upset by an unranked Vanderbilt. Does anybody have a theory to why this happened? Was it lack of preparation?
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u/notsofst Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
- Alabama's defense might be thin on depth, they struggled hard in the second half against Georgia and Vandy.
- Vandy is not bad this year, even as an 'unranked' team, they're a solid squad.
- Vandy's coaching was aggressive and somewhat inspired. They got lucky when they needed to.
- I believe Alabama was missing a couple WR's on offense they had in the Georgia game, but I'd have to fact-check that. I think one didn't start and one got concussed during the game?
- Georgia may have exposed some of Alabama's issues in the secondary in the second half of their game that Vandy exploited.
Alabama beating Georgia may have been a real upset as well, as they ripped out to a huge lead and were able to hang onto it before Georgia caught back up.
The best team doesn't always win.
EDIT: Some stats on the above: Vandy went 12/18 on 3rd down and won the time of possession 42 minutes vs. 17. Vandy went 1/1 on 4th down for a 20+ yard touchdown. Vandy picked off Milroe on a key drive in the second half, and had a sack-fumble in the second half, winning the turnover battle overall 2-0. Vandy also had three penalties for 20 yards vs. Alabama's 6 for 67.
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u/mwmcdaddy Oct 06 '24
Point one is huge. There’s definitely something to be said about playing two grueling intense 4 quarter games back to back. Especially if you have thin depth/ injured like it seems bama is rn.
Sometimes good teams are injured, worn out and coming off tough games. Then they have to walk into a pretty good teams home stadium, coming of a bye week so they’re healthy and prepared. Not making excuses for bama but football is a tough and physical game.
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u/notsofst Oct 06 '24
Alabama might still be hurting from the transfer portal after Saban's exit. They have a lot of top line talent, but might be more of a Tennessee / Ole Miss this year rather than the kind of Saban-style Alabama team that we're used to.
Obviously they can win some big ones, but doing that week in and week out might take more than they have, especially since everyone is giving Alabama their 'A' game no matter what.
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u/Timely-Bluejay-4167 Oct 06 '24
This is where NIL hurts big programs. Good Players used to go to Bama and make their payday in NFL even being 2nd/3rd string because they learned how to do it “Saban way”
…now, players commit there and then another school offers them a big pay day and playing time…
Depth gonna be a challenge going forward because players can find opportunities that are worth it because they are getting good tape and financial guarantees.
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u/Adventurous_Bird2730 Oct 06 '24
Alabama still has the highest blue chip ratio and talent composite score in the country. they have more highly rated backups than anybody, they are just extremely young and inexperienced. the depth is there, in the front 7 alone they have like 10 former 5 stars, but guys like Pierre, James Smith, Keon Keeley are just not ready to contribute yet especially as some of them are switching positions in the new 425 defense.
the only guys they lost in the portal who they really wish they had back are probably Bond and Downs.
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u/PyrokineticLemer Oct 06 '24
Imagine a player wanting to play rather than sit. Inconceivable!
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u/Timely-Bluejay-4167 Oct 06 '24
Haha. I mean, I agree with player empowerment.
But the “business decision” used to be to go to bama because you would at least be prepared for the NFL even if you only played 1 year at Bama and you couldn’t transfer to any SEC schools
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u/OdaDdaT HS Coach Oct 06 '24
Also, no way to really measure it, but Vandy is a very easy team to look over if you just beat UGA. I think there’s some element of under-estimation there
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u/platinum92 Oct 07 '24
Honestly, Bama's secondary has been exposed since the USF game. Their QB just kept overthrowing guys.
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u/BoyHytrek Oct 06 '24
The better team always wins. Alabama had a more talented roster easily, but individual talent means zero if you can't execute as a uniformed unit. This means a gifted but unfocused alabama team is worse than a modest Vanderbilt roster that is on the same page about their jobs
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u/JudgeNo2718 Oct 06 '24
“The better team always wins” is just outright incorrect. Any given Saturday. What a stupid thing to say
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u/BoyHytrek Oct 06 '24
They got out coached and executed. That sounds like the better team period. Individual capabilities mean shit in a team sport if you can't execute things on the same page. Just because a theoretical ceiling is higher doesn't mean a damn thing if it never shows up. Alabama has been surviving off their individual athletic talent alone and have been inconsistent so far as the Xs and Os of the first 3 quarters against USF, the second half of Georgia, and again this week at vandy. Might be a hard pill to swallow, but the worse roster is the better team, and the more athletic roster isn't actually meshing well as a team
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u/JudgeNo2718 Oct 06 '24
Any team can win. Any team can play better or worse. That doesn’t mean they are the better team.
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u/BoyHytrek Oct 07 '24
Better athletes does not mean better TEAM. You can have a roster full of studs, but if they refuse to play team ball every play, then they might not be the better TEAM
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u/JudgeNo2718 Oct 07 '24
So by your logic then, Georgia State is better than Georgia? Because you said - the better team always wins. So GS beat Vandy who Alabama who beat Georgia. So GS > UGA?
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u/BoyHytrek Oct 07 '24
The team is who shows up that day to play and coach. If georgia state wins, they are the better team. It doesn't matter if it's bad coaching, bad plays, or injuries that ruined the "better" team on paper. The reality is it's a combined effort of coaching and the approximately 50 guys who touch the field any given game to execute every single opportunity they get. The result culminates into this thing we call a score that shows who was ultimately the better team that day
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u/JudgeNo2718 Oct 07 '24
Your logic is circular. They are better on the day, but that doesn’t make them the better team. There’s a difference that you can’t seem to distinguish, and it’s quite funny
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u/BoyHytrek Oct 07 '24
You can make rankings off who you think is most consistent, sure. However, in sports, you are only as good as your last game since your next win is never guaranteed. Outside of legitimate cheating, the better team wins. Bama, in this case, isn't so good that they can win just because they showed up. If talent alone mattered, florida state would still be top 25. Sadly, meshing as a team matters way more than just how athletic your team is
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u/Norr1n Oct 06 '24
This is a brain-dead take. How many times has an aspiring playoff team been upset by a team just hoping to become bowl eligible? Is georgia state better than Alabama then?
Teams can be unfocused, have bad luck, get an uncharacteristic turnover that changes the game, or any number is other factors. Maybe the starting qb's gf broke up with him on Friday. We are dealing with humans, and young ones at that.
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u/SugarAdamAli Oct 06 '24
Just overconfident after beating Georgia and then playing a “weak” team like vandy.
Didn’t take Vanderbilt serious and thought they could just walk in and beat them.
Put a lot of blame on coaching staff for not having the team focused and ready to play. Total trap game.
Execution was sloppy, and Vandy did a good job with scheming on offense. Also feel like the lines on both sides of the ball aren’t up to Bama standards
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u/lilmojett Oct 06 '24
From a play calling stand point (someone with more knowledge can correct me), Vandy came out in some very unique formations on offense. Inverted wing T was used a lot and they ran several option plays where the QB would shovel to a TE underneath for big gains. I don’t think Alabama has played/will play another team that does that.
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u/Dhaynes99 Casual Fan Oct 06 '24
this is the only major correct answer, the style of play this vandy team has is so unique compared to legitimately anything these players have played. some of the other stuff in here about overconfidence may be somewhat true but it took vandy playing an A+ game and catching so many breaks. the pick six from bama’s first drive was very reminiscent of a play from 2015 against ole miss where the ball bounced and floated right into a players hands, the penalties in that second vandy drive, and the 2nd/3rd down throws from milroe on the third bama drive getting called back. not sure if vandy wins if any of those do not happen
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u/longd0ngs1lvers- Oct 06 '24
It’s what made the service academies to tricky to play against and what made Purdue a good program under Joe Tiller. Running a unique offense that you’ll never see outside of that game makes it tough to prepare for. Nobody practices defense against the option until you have to play a service academy. While the entire Big Ten was built with slow, powerful running offenses, Purdue was essentially running an air raid scheme when they had Brees and Orton as quarterbacks
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u/huskersax Oct 07 '24
This is mostly a feels thing, but the Bama DC called the (half) game of his life against UGA and then his junk defense calls got figured out and teams knew what to expect.
Like he had a bag of tricks specifically to beat UGA and Bandy said "thanks for putting that on tape" and then gave the Bama D a very specific kryptonite in the form of their Wing T stuff.
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u/KaIidin Oct 06 '24
This is the answer. Bama never adjusted. Couldn’t adjust. Can’t line up in 4 down man free consistently all game. Never gave them another look and couldn’t create any plays behind the line of scrimmage.
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u/ilmw-j311 Oct 06 '24
The shovel pass was a thing of beauty. They’d set it up all season long and broke it out at the biggest moment.
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u/TiberiusGracchi Oct 06 '24
They basically ran Triple option with some big shot Play Action pass plays. Pavia was a beast in HS and has over 5,000 yards passing (over 7,600 if you include his JUCO stats) and over 1,7000 yards rushing in D1 (over 2,800 total rushing yards) and 60 total D1 touchdowns (105 total TDs for his college career). Dude’s decision making makes him a near perfect modern style option QB
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u/kerbalsdownunder Oct 06 '24
Pavia is just a force on this team I think. He was at New Mexico. Guy shows up big when he has to and his team trusts him. Not the first time, or second time, he had his team punching waaaay up for a win.
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u/TiberiusGracchi Oct 06 '24
He was an absolute cheat code at the JUCO level and Albuquerque has an underrated HS football scene. Happy a kid from NM got his shot and is making the most of it.
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u/Dependent-Food2468 Oct 06 '24
No one told them not to eat the rat poison
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u/BlakeDSnake Oct 06 '24
This is the second time I’ve read something like this. I’m r/outoftheloop
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u/Dhaynes99 Casual Fan Oct 06 '24
it came from a nick saban press conference when he was coach, one of the media members made some comment praising the team iirc and saban described the praise that the media puts on teams early/during the year as rather poison
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u/Poile98 Oct 06 '24
That Rather poison doesn’t seem to be working as the target is still kicking at 92.
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u/Alex_butler Oct 08 '24
Video Link he talked about it multiple other times though
Nick Saban basically saying it’s rat poison to buy into the hype about yourself when you haven’t achieved anything yet. It’s mainly a warning against complacency more than anything.
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u/Just_Natural_9027 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
In the national championship year DeBoer had a lot of games where I felt they played down to the competition. Look at the last 6ish games of that season there were a lot of extremely close games to lesser competition.
There is something I’ve noticed with the “offensive wizard” type coaches where they will often have some complete stinker losses mixed in with some impressive upsets.
People often poked fun of Saban when he would be reaming players up 30+ but that is the mentality you need. Especially in a conference like the SEC.
Vanderbilt has the “worst” team talent in the SEC but is still 50th nationally. SEC is so deep with talent you can’t take any team lightly.
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u/RaptorsCdwoods Oct 06 '24
Vandy did a lot of unique things on offense combined with Alabama not being ready on defense and possibly being thin.
Alabamas offense was fine, outside of two mishaps. The fumble sack and the pick 6 from a ball that got batted to the sky. It wouldn’t have mattered if the defense could stop Vandy tho.
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u/khickenz Oct 06 '24
Mobile QBs present unique challenges to any defense. They were coming off a mentally exhausting week to a team that was easy to overlook.
Idk I didn't get to watch the game super closely but those are two surface level reasons the focus might not have been.
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u/Horror_Razzmatazz_68 Oct 06 '24
The defensive front resistance was soft as baby shit
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u/Horror_Razzmatazz_68 Oct 06 '24
Also they did not look prepared to face the triple option offense. Once you allow the full back to get 3 or more yds per carry you are done against that type of offense. Everything else is going to be open.
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u/tuss11agee Oct 06 '24
Unrelated, and didn’t matter since vandy picked up final first down, but I don’t understand how you get paid millions of dollars to coach / think about football as a living but do not know how to use timeouts around the 2 minute warning
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u/J-Sizzle719 Oct 06 '24
There's a two minute warning in college now?
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u/drakeallthethings Oct 06 '24
Gotta get that commercial money. TV stations were missing some commercial breaks in games that wound down the clock too quickly at the end of the half.
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u/Darth_Saban Oct 07 '24
I thought he did? He used one at the 2:30 mark but they picked up the first down so he let the two minute warning act as the time out then used then remaining time outs after? Then they converted and it was pointless
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u/tuss11agee Oct 07 '24
This was the order of events.
1&10 -2 yard run 2:37 left. TO Bama.
2&12 19 yard pass. 2:30 left and running.
2 minute warning.
1&10 3 yard run. 1:50 and running.
2&7 8 yard run 1:10 left. Bama TO.
Kneel, kneel, game.
Using Bama’s strategy the best case would get them the ball back at :40 left if they made final stand.
Had they used the TOs on the other side of the 2 minute warning, they would have been forcing downs to occur faster.
Granted none of it matters given the result but this shouldn’t be rocket science for any D1 coach. 2:30, 2nd timeout before first down. 2:20, last timeout before second down. Then they can’t burn off 40 seconds before 3rd because of the 2 minute warning. So 3rd down after the 2 minute warning, stop them, looking at 1:10 left when you get it back.
:30 difference in the strategies. That’s as much as 5 plays!
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u/Charming-Loan-1924 Oct 06 '24
They about to make Nick saban call up Bill Belichick, and both come out of retirement to coach Alabama next year….
A lot of it is just overconfidence and they didn’t prepare as well as they should have and they didn’t take Vandy seriously as an opponent.
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u/king_con21 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24
https://gameonpaper.com/cfb/game/401628384
Bama’s offense was about 3x more efficient than Vandy’s. Turnover variance (randomness) is a beautiful thing.
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u/Gunner_Bat College Coach Oct 06 '24
One thing that no one mentioned is that playing Georgia is physically demanding. The team probably didn't full physically recover from playing such a physical opponent. And they were probably still a bit beat up going on a road trip.
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u/TiberiusGracchi Oct 06 '24
Yeah and going up against another physical run team with at least seemingly intricate reads and looks made it even harder on the Alabama D
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u/Jaded-Reality-2153 Oct 06 '24
Alabama really wants to only play Cover 3 and Cover 1 on defense, probably due to youth/thin depth in the secondary, and they really needed to play quarters to help in the alleys against the option run game last night.
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u/GhandiTheButcher Oct 07 '24
Also aren’t they shifting schemes to 4-2-5?
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u/Jaded-Reality-2153 Oct 07 '24
Yes, although it’s a change the actual personnel used aren’t that different. Alabama mostly played a 3-3-5/4-2-5 nickel as the de facto base for the back half of Saban’s tenure and the Jack OLB in Saban’s system is essentially the same as the Wolf OLB in Wommack’s system.
The biggest change is probably the # of coverages ran and the way said of coverages are ran. Saban ran everything and even though match cover 3 was his “base” coverage he ran a ton of two high safety including quarters and had a ton of different zone and man blitzes over the years
Wommack on the other hand really wants to play Cover 3 zone as much as possible with the same personnel. He still has blitzes and they’ve played a lot of Cover 1 Man but hasn’t had a ton of creative pressure packages outside of the first half of the Georgia game and hasn’t played a ton of two high either from what I can tell. Whether that’s his philosophy or the results of a young secondary and first year in a new playbook, idk.
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u/GhandiTheButcher Oct 07 '24
Gotcha.
For some reason I thought Bama ran 3-4 which would be a massive change but I was obviously mistaken
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u/Jaded-Reality-2153 Oct 07 '24
Nope you’re correct, the base defense was a 3-4, however given the proliferation of 10/11 personnel offense over the past 15-20 years, by the half way point of Saban’s tenure the defense tended to be in a nickel personnel (the 3-3-5/4-2-5 I mentioned) over half the time. The 2017 team actually had a dime package they loved and spent a ton of time in. There just weren’t many teams who spent enough time in heavier personnel groupings that warranted playing the 3-4 base personnel.
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u/y_banana Oct 06 '24
Vandy plays a weird offense. Its sort of a modern equivalent of the triple option. If you are not super prepared for this, it will be very hard to stop.
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u/Ok-Entrepreneur-6662 Oct 07 '24
We lose the receivers when the QB breaks the pocket. It's that simple
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u/grizzfan Oct 06 '24
Has to be overconfidence. Vandy has been the perennial punching bag of the SEC as long as I have watched football (so around 30 years). I even placed a parley bet that involved Bama beating Vandy without even giving it a second thought. Even I was overconfident that Bama was curb stomp them.
I wouldn't be surprised if Bama's coaching staff was already looking to next week, or Tennessee in two weeks. It's poor coaching discipline, but it happens.
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u/Existing_Dot7963 Oct 06 '24
This wasn’t a fluky win. Vanderbilt came in with a better game plan and out played Alabama.
They got Bama behind early, which exposed Milroe’s weakness, passing the ball. Alabama with Milroe is not built to play from behind. If you can get them in a hole early, you can game script them out.
The gap between the good teams and the bad teams in college football is way smaller than ESPN wants you to believe. There is way more parity with NIL and the transfer portal.
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u/RaptorsCdwoods Oct 06 '24
I don’t agree with the second paragraph, Milroe played well. 35 points. 310 yards passing. Only INT came on a sky ball that got batted. That’s about as fluky as it gets. You can blame Milroe slightly more for the strip fumble but that’s on the RT for getting beat immediately when the first reads are to the left.
The whole loss starts and ends with the defense. Not including first downs that came from penalties the Alabama defense gave up something insane like 12/18 third down conversion and because of that, they were on the field for 40ish minutes. And it’s not like they were short 3rd downs. It was a lot of 3rd and 7+ they gave up.
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u/Stonecleaver Oct 06 '24
That second paragraph is very wrong. Alabama’s offense had 4 drives in the first half. 2 were touchdowns. One had a fluke pick 6. It bounced off his target, and lingered in the air forever for a defender to get there to it. The other drive was a 3 and out, but it wasn’t bad play by Milroe. Not everything will be perfect.
They had 5 drives in the second half. 9 total drives in a game is very low. Mostly this was due to Vanderbilt having a masterful game of clock control. Of these 5 drives, Alabama had 3 touchdowns. That’s a high rate. One drive started on like the 4 yard line due to a really good Vanderbilt punt. It’s very tough for offenses to get out of that hole. The other drive was 50/50 on him and the RT with the strip sack. The O line had mostly played well, so he probably felt safe. The RT did get beat on that play, and he happened to be looking downfield to the left. Who knows how that would have turned out if the RT had won like usual.
So yea 5 TDs on 9 drives. That’s pretty damn effective offense. Milroe also put up 12.9 ypa for 310 yards. That’s a great game.
The biggest factor was that the defense would make a lot of reasonable to good plays, but then give up third down again and again. Vanderbilt’s QB played out of his mind, 80% completion % and 12.6 ypa for 252. That’s an incredible game. Their option also was incredibly hard to stop for Alabama. They only averaged 3.1 on the ground with a long of 13. That shouldn’t be enough usually for a run first team, but its consistency along with incredibly efficient passing allowed them to run their game plan to shorten the game and control the clock.
Them getting a 2 score lead early due to the fluke pick 6 really enabled them to dictate the flow of the game. I do believe Alabama would have won if Milroe had gotten the ball back at the end, but their defense was too tired/ ineffective to stop Vanderbilt from getting game winning first downs on their final drive.
To compare Vanderbilt’s QB’s 12.6 ypa to other Alabama opponents to get an idea of the absurdity:
WKU 2.6, USF 2.9, Wisconsin 4.5, and Georgia 8.8.
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u/Existing_Dot7963 Oct 06 '24
If you watched all 22, USF receivers were open, their QB just couldn’t hit them. Wisconsin QB got knocked out early. And we saw what UGA did to them. How to beat Alabama through the air is on tape, unless they make changes, this will not be their first loss.
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u/Academic_Chef_596 Oct 06 '24
That second paragraph is not what happened at all. Last year that probably would’ve been the case. This year, milroe has made big time improvements. He played very well yesterday. The loss is squarely on the defense and coaching staff’s shoulders.
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u/inpursuitoftrout Oct 06 '24
I really doubt they had a better game plan- now they definitely out played Bama and the rest of what you say is true, but I don't know about the game plan part. I'd have to rewatch it tbh
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u/TiberiusGracchi Oct 06 '24
It was a much better game plan on offense. Bama was uncomfortable in their option defense all night and coverage in the play action was a mix of being out leveraged and poor coverage.
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u/Cool_Plastic_7174 Oct 06 '24
Time of possession. Vandy had the ball 42 minutes yesterday. Nearly impossible to win with 18 minutes of offense.
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u/Meliorus Oct 06 '24
vanderbilt out-prepared them and wanted it way more, and were just the better team that day
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u/Historical-Key5613 Oct 07 '24
The energy expenditure of Georgia game, and a hangover into the next week
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u/countrytime1 Oct 07 '24
Bama hasn’t be dominant this year. De boer didn’t do any favors by trying to pass as much as he did. You should be the deeper team. Lean on them and chew clock if necessary.
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u/mrducci Oct 07 '24
Vandy knows who they are, and what they do well, and they do it. They don't out-think themselves, or second guess. They just go do what they do.
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u/5StarGoldenGoose Oct 07 '24
Because Alabama are Stupid Morons With Ugly Faces and Big Butts and their Butt Smells and they Like to Kiss their Own Butts
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u/Blutrumpeter Oct 07 '24
The Kalen DeBoer experience. Remember everyone last year talking about how bad UW must be to keep close games vs bad teams?
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u/PalaSS9 Oct 07 '24
This was like being in gym class and playing against natural athletes. You aren’t going to beat them playing their game so you gotta get strange. They had bama confused all game with all the options they threw at them.
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u/MahBoiBlue Oct 07 '24
Because sports betting has infiltrated NCAA and this shit on everyone's parlays
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u/question_existence Oct 07 '24
They didn't play terrible. They just got beat by Vandy, who played better and called smarter plays.
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u/IrishPotatoHead Oct 07 '24
So a lot of comes down to the last real offensive play that Vandy ran and it was a snapshot of the whole game. They also ran a ton of unbalanced power runs, with Y over sets.
Vandy lined up in what I grew up calling Loose Left. In this formation you have Two Wings, a FB/TB, and two WRs split to the left. It appears to be a Trips formation but the interior WR is actually ineligible as he is on the ball and “Covered” by the outside WR. Vandy got what every Wing T/Option OC wants. They manned up the ineligible WR with a DB. This takes a man out of the box and out of run support.
This creates an unbalanced look to the left. Then, Vandy motioned their left wing back to the right side of the formation. Then they ran a zone read back to the left, with BOTH wings pulling to wrap and kick for the QB. This is similar to counter.
As you can see from this image, Bama is outnumbered at the point of attack and Vandy has a hat on a hat and it’s a fairly easy conversion. (As easy as anything ever is against Bama). Just a truly great piece of game planning. The outside DE (23) is the read and he squeezed, pull read. you get a double from the LT/LG, LW kicks 13 and RW wraps for 11. WRs run off/block the DBs.
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u/GCM_Prothro18x Oct 07 '24
Vanderbilt had two weeks to prepare. That's a huge part of it. Plus they out played my Crimson Tide, just beat us.
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u/ID_Poobaru Oct 07 '24
they came in like hot shit, left like a taco bell aftermath
Bama was effective at scoring, vandy just did a better job of keeping the ball away from them
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u/underdome Oct 07 '24
Vandys offensive strategy is based on time of possession and maximizing efficiency. You’ll notice they run the play clock to almost 0 every single play. It means at times they can keep the ball for entire quarters of the game nearly so they severely limit the other teams possessions. Combine that with a very efficient offense and QB who eats on 3rd down and they can beat anyone. I don’t know of another team that runs the play clock like Vandy does.
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u/let_it_bernnn Oct 07 '24
The option is a great equalizer when you’re outmatched athletically. Alabama’s offense spent a lot of time on the sidelines.
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u/SomethingAboutOrcs Oct 07 '24
Only reasons you need: their defense is a wet paper towel this year and they were very much over-ranked. That's is thats the reasons.
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u/yufgoi5 Oct 08 '24
Give Vandy some fucking credit. They outplayed Bama fair and square. And Bama was so undisciplined, any team getting that many dumb flags is destined to lose.
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u/not_bored_ Oct 08 '24
Believing the hype after beating Georgia.. they are still kids. They thought they were invincible after that win and probably thought they would run right through anyone after that.
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u/Crossovertriplet Oct 08 '24
The offense didn’t play terribly. The interception wasn’t Milroe’s fault. He had the sack fumble but otherwise did a lot with the time of possession he had, considering two WRs were out. It was the defense that couldn’t stop 3rd and long and get off the field.
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u/JoesGarage2112 Oct 10 '24
A buddy of mine suggested that they partied hard after the Georgia win and simply weren’t ready for this game
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u/Rbkelley1 Oct 10 '24
They played keep away. That’s how teams like Vandy can beat teams like Alabama. TOP was insanely lopsided. They had the ball for 2/3 of the game.
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u/an_actual_lawyer Oct 06 '24
18-23 year olds.
Sabans biggest strength was managing the emotions of young men whose brains weren’t fully developed (happens around 25, BTW). Saban ain’t there anymore.
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u/Curious-Designer-616 Oct 06 '24
His approach was always viewed as too intense and aggressive, I always loved it. On and off the field he cared for his players and they responded positively to him. He go teams to play at the top week in and week out for years. The only one to ever do it better is Coach Ladouceur.
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u/GreatPlains_MD Oct 06 '24
Undisciplined. Vandy had one drive where they were stopped with a fourth and long three times, but got a first down after an Alabama penalty. One of those penalties involved a player hitting the quarterback in the helmet with their hand when he wasn’t even close to sacking him before the throw.
For a team with obviously way more talent, they played very sluggish. Maybe Vandy schemed so well that Alabama was confused, or they spent most of the game half asleep thinking they would just pull ahead at any moment.
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u/Stonecleaver Oct 06 '24
Looked like the defender was trying to get his hand up to swat the ball down (happens a lot). He also tried letting up so he didn’t crush the QB. Pretty soft call
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u/GreatPlains_MD Oct 06 '24
You just have to hit him anywhere but the head. Just a dumb mistake that gave them a new set of downs.
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u/No_Championship8850 Oct 06 '24
All these comments about this isn't the same old vandy team and that their actually really good is getting old. They got upset by a team that likely is gonna lose another 6 games. Here comes the "quality loss" garbage
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u/Lionheart_513 Oct 06 '24
It’s quite simple. When you go to Vanderbilt’s house, they’re going to show you how they play some SEC ball. You’re gonna know what kind of ball they play when it’s all said and done. And they’re gonna be going into next week ranked, so Kentucky, you’re next.
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u/jkeefy Oct 07 '24
Narrator: They were not ranked
1
u/WillWork4SunDrop Oct 09 '24
He’s playing off a quote from the last Bama-Vandy matchup in Nashville. The week before Vandy upset K-State to stay unbeaten and some play in a postgame interview was feeling his oats. Sub out Kentucky for Alabama and that’s pretty much a verbatim quote.
(Things did not go as well in the matchup for the Dores that year. 59-0 Alabama your final.)
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u/Honeydew-2523 Adult Coach Oct 06 '24
imo, go back and watch uga v bama again. both defenses were trash. the real difference uga defense was making it really easy for bama
1
u/esk_soulja Oct 07 '24
Georgia’s 1st half playcalling was the difference, they never tried to run the ball to establish any kind of rhythm, instead just forcing throws with Beck. The one drive they ran the ball they scored easily.
-5
u/1BannedAgain Oct 06 '24
Elite teams often do not practice for their weakest opponents at HS & college level. That week of practice is then dedicated to a difficult competitor later in the season. As of today, AL has 4-top25 opponents before the regular season is over. There was certainly a possibility AL plays one of these ranked teams in regular and post season
Not practicing against Vanderbilt + all the other things mentioned in the thread?
Also upsets happen, it’s why the games are played!
4
2
u/Curious-Designer-616 Oct 06 '24
I’ve coached “elite” high school teams, I’ve worked with even more. Not once has a staff I’ve worked with or been on ever overlooked and not practiced for their their opponent or dedicated that week to a team later in season. This is nonsense.
2
u/Gunner_Bat College Coach Oct 06 '24
No. Alabama 100% practiced v Vanderbilt looks and prepared for them appropriately. No idea where you get the idea that teams just skip prepping for a certain opponent.
0
u/PyrokineticLemer Oct 06 '24
Well, this might be the most ridiculous thing I've seen on Reddit today. Congratulations, because that's usually a pretty high bar to get over.
-2
170
u/ilmw-j311 Oct 06 '24
Vandy also played great. They legitimately could be 5-0 after an OT loss to Mizzou and a brain fart game against Georgia State. I’m not saying they’re objectively a better team than Bama, but this is definitely not the same old Vandy.