11/17 MSU Game
I’m torn about how to start this blog, because even though we just played and beat another Top 20 team that had an off-week before playing us, the only thing that any of us are thinking about right now is the upcoming Auburn game. So how about this? I spend a paragraph or two on last night’s game, then I move on to the Iron Bowl.
Actually, I shouldn’t slight our player’s effort against Mississippi State. The Bulldogs are a quality team that had all the motivation in the world and an extra week to prepare for us. As for us, we were just playing Mississippi State, and who cares about that? Evidently, our players do, and it showed on Saturday night. It was evident from the opening drive that Marquis Maze was going to play like a man possessed, and I think his intensity really rubbed off on the rest of the team. After he plowed over two MSU defensive backs on the way to the end zone, I thought everything cranked up a notch. And was it my imagination, or did Mark Ingram look like he suddenly decided that he was going to get some yards in spite of our paper mache offensive line, because he started hitting the line hard after the first couple of drives.
This game was never really in doubt. Yes, we gave up some pretty good drives that fizzled out before they could put points on the board, and after an early interception, the MSU coaches became very conservative and didn’t attack our secondary as much as I thought they would. From a consistency standpoint, our offense was still very shaky. We had several big plays that put the game out of reach, but I would have been more comfortable had we been able to consistently run the ball against the slightly better than average Bulldog front seven. Which leads me to the upcoming Auburn game.
Here’s the thing. I no longer think that we’ll beat Auburn, but instead, I watch these games looking for ways that it could possibly happen. I noticed that against MSU we actually appeared to make an effort to run the ball outside of the tackle box, which is good, because Nick Fairley lurks in the middle of the Auburn line, and he’s going to rampage through Vlachos and Warmack like a marauding Hun. Sure, he’s a worthless piece of crap, but he’s the most dominant defensive lineman in the nation this year, and with him lurking in the middle, running wide like we finally decided to do against Mississippi State might be the only chance we have to run the ball against Auburn. That being said, I don’t know if we can possibly establish enough of a running game against their defensive line to do any good, and I’m almost certain that we can’t protect McElroy long enough to have any kind of passing attack. But that’s not our biggest problem.
The biggest challenge we have, of course, is stopping Cam and company. Can we do it? C’mon; you know the answer to that as well as I do. Really, the question is simply can we take advantage of the few chances that we might get to stop individual drives so that we can try to outscore them. It’s not totally outlandish to say that we might need to score a TD on every possession that we have, and stop them on one of theirs as the only way we can beat them. Against Georgia, whose defense is every bit as good as ours, they had two drives stopped on dropped passes (which we absolutely cannot expect to happen for us), and then one more drive that was stopped on a third and 2. Other than that, Auburn scored a TD on each and every possession they had.
So you might ask yourself based on the previous two paragraphs, if we can’t move the ball on Auburn, and if we can’t stop Auburn’s offense, how are we going to beat them? Here’s what we have going for us. First and foremost, we’re playing in Tuscaloosa. With 100,000+ fans screaming their lungs out, hopefully the AU offense will have a hard time communicating to change their plays at the line of scrimmage like they love to do. Also, I’ve noticed throughout the year our defense seems to play a step faster at home. Penn State, Florida, Ole Miss, and Mississippi State all had poor offensive days against us in T-Town, and even though none of them are in Auburn’s league offensively, at least it points toward the possibility that our defense might be better than we’re expecting. On offense, even though we’re hampered by the matchup of their defensive line against our offensive line, we do have some serious playmakers on offense. Trent, Mark, and Julio are as good as anyone in the nation when they’re on, and McElroy can be extremely accurate when he’s on his game. Plus, we saw against Mississippi State that Marquis Maze isn’t ready to throw in the towel on this season just yet. So maybe, just maybe, all of these factors will come together so we can pull off a miracle in 11 days. Do I think we’ll win? Absolutely not, but keep in mind that I’ve predicted us to lose once this year, and that was against Arkansas. We won that game. Maybe I’ll miss this prediction too, and you guys can all tell me all about it. It would be the most delicious crow ever!
We do have another game in two days, as we face the Georgia State Somethings on Thursday night. It should be a cakewalk (if not, we’re in more trouble than I thought). The main thing we should be rooting for is no injuries. I will blog after that game, but you can expect that blog, like this one, to be almost completely dedicated to the Iron Bowl. Maybe I’ll think of things to give us some hope!
As always, feel free to send me any questions of comments. Until next time, Roll Tide!
Kenny
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