12/31 The Colorado Game
You didn’t think I would miss a chance to blog on this game, did you? On Sunday night, Alabama won the Petrosun Independence Bowl 30-24 over the Colorado Buffaloes. As a result of this win, we finish the season with a winning record, 7-6. I know that doesn’t seem like much, but I’m confident that it will give us a little momentum going into the off-season. As for the game itself, where do I start? The game began with a bang. Alabama’s offense was clicking on all cylinders, and early in the second quarter, we had a 27-0 lead. However, the turning point in the game occurred right before our last touchdown, and very few people noticed. Our starting left guard, Justin Britt, left the game with a leg injury. As a result, we moved our starting center, Antoine Caldwell, into Britt’s slot at LG, and moved Evan Cardwell into the center position. From that point on, their nose guard dominated the line of scrimmage, completely wiping Cardwell on almost every play. JPW’s interception was extremely costly, and certainly flipped the momentum of the game, but if you watch the play closely, you’ll see that he threw the ball under tremendous pressure, and that pressure was applied by, you guessed it, Cardwell’s man.
Still, with a 27-0 lead, you would think that we’d be safe, but remember, this is Alabama we’re talking about, and so you knew how things were going to go. They scored a TD late in the half to make it 27-7, and then we inexcusably allowed a TD right before halftime to make it 27-14. At this point I should mention that the defense was actually playing well; CU just executed really well on several plays, and we made a mistake right before halftime that cost us the TD. Still, since our defense seemed to have fairly good control of things, I still thought we’d win, but obviously, I wasn’t happy about the turn of events.
We were on our heels almost the entire second half, and with Cardwell doing his best Chris Capps impression, our offense wasn’t going anywhere, forcing our defense to spend the entire half on the field. CU’s offense was playing well, and until that final flurry, we were fortunate to hold them to two FG attempts, one of which they made. So that left us in the following situation: we were ahead 27-17 with about 8 minutes left, and we had the ball.
That’s when something magical happened. Saban actually tried to score! I know it seems counterintuitive to anyone that has been around Bama football for the last several years (really decades). Our standard procedure has always been to sit on the ball, milking approximately 1:30 off the clock, leaving the other team plenty of time to score, which they would inevitably do. Not this time, however! We worked the ball down the field, and ultimately kicked a field goal to make the score 30-17 (note that I disagreed with Saban; I would have gone for the TD on fourth and goal from the 5). Of course, when CU got the ball back, they scored in about a microsecond to make the score 30-24, and I was pretty sure that we’d sit on the ball so that CU could hand us yet another classic loss. However, Saban actually tried to get first downs. By the time CU got the ball back, there was only one second left, and we managed to hold on for the victory.
Even though this was a meaningless bowl against a less than stellar opponent, I saw several positives in this game. First, even though you may disagree, I thought our defense played better than I’ve seen in awhile. The defensive line made several excellent plays behind the line of scrimmage. Wallace Gilberry was a monster! The spread aspect of their offense was largely ineffective because of the penetration we were able to get. Our linebackers are really starting to look good. Rolando McClain played an outstanding game, and believe me, that wasn’t an aberration; he really is that good, and he’s only going to get better. Ezekial Knight is still learning the LB position, but he looked great last night. Did you see the play where he ran over their RT on his way to the QB? The good things that you saw last night are signs of what’s to come with Saban’s defense, and the bad things that you saw will happen less and less as Saban’s system gets more and more ingrained into the players’ minds.
On the offensive side, when we had our starting OL out there, JPW had plenty of time to throw, and our RBs actually had some room to run. Of course, all of that ended when Cardwell entered the lineup, but I have to think that a lot of those depth problems will be corrected in the off-season. JPW actually played well when he did have time to throw, and hopefully he’ll get his mental kinks worked out before next season.
Personally, I feel a lot better about things after last night’s win. I think it is important that we had a winning season, if nothing else for the mental state of the returning players. And how can you not feel good for the departing seniors? Wallace Gilberry, Matt Caddell, DJ Hall, Keith Brown, and Simeon Castille get to go out as winners, and hopefully years down the road they’ll be able to say that they were there when this whole thing got started.
It’s only going to get better. National Signing Day is only a little over a month away, and wait until you see the players that Saban’s bringing in. I’ll post a recruiting recap once the dust has settled. Believe me, you don’t want to miss it!
Roll Tide, Kenny
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