It was hard for me to type that title, but it's true. It's really the reason we lost yesterday. Bama is a good but a flawed team much like we are. Yet, on the road, making mistake after mistake and providing us every opportunity to take the game in hand, they still won. Why?! Here are my main reasons thinking back...
- Poor Game Management - Across the board, each of the coaches fell down. Jimbo went for it when he shouldn't have. Didn't when he should've. Wasted crucial timeouts. Petrino's red zone play calls were awful, should've dropped some of the QB runs and gone more to the pass quick game. It was hard to tell on the last because Max was holding the ball so much and there was no blocking in the 2nd half. Durkin couldn't adjust to guarding # 3. Our adjustments in the 2nd half were nil overall. Addazio's message simply isn't getting through. Bama's kids bowed up for Milroe when the pressure ramped up; our guys just didn't do that.
- Weak Groups Exposed - Pretty obvious where our weaknesses were yesterday so I'm not going to call out any guys individually. We are who we are. There's no getting around that. I'd like to see Crownover more time at RT going forward. I think we've got to keep blitzing on defense, because truthfully I just don't see us as very good in zone, either. We need a boatload of DBs from somewhere if we're ever going to get better. On the O Line, I think it's coaching. I just think our kids can't be as bad as they look sometimes. In fact, I know they're not because I see them play very well at times. It's just not consistent.
- Character of Cultural Winning - This last thing is really hard for me to define. Every coach talks about building a winning culture, but at Bama and a few other places, they've managed to define, refine, reimagine winning many times over throughout their programs' collective histories. That, My Fellow Ags, is the difference between a program wanting to win and one expecting to win. It may sound corny but I really think this attitude permeates from the top down..through the administration, the coaches, the players, all the way to the guys cutting the grass. I live two and a half hours from Tuscaloosa. If they would've lost, sure, many of the fans would've been ticked, but many more would've been, well, it just means we'll be the first ones in with 2 losses. Some can call it arrogance but really it's a winning mentality built into their core. I hope we can get to that one day.
