9/27 Dont'a Hightower
Are you guys familiar with the term “Pyrrhic Victory?” A Pyrrhic victory is a victory with devastating cost to the victor, and I think it’s very appropriate when describing Alabama’s 35-7 win over Arkansas on Saturday. Sure, we won a very important game by a decisive margin over a tough opponent, but as you all know, we lost one of our best and most important defenders, Dont’a Hightower, for the season with a horrific knee injury. I’ll talk about the game in a separate blog, but I want to talk about Hightower’s injury and our path forward in this blog.
As you know, Hightower was playing the “Will” position, which is another word for the weakside inside linebacker. Paired with Rolando McClain who plays the “Mike” linebacker position, we had the best interior linebacker combo in the nation. Hightower was very flexible, and he would not only cover Tight Ends and running backs coming out of the backfield, but he would also rush the passer. In fact, he was such an effective pass rusher that there was talk of moving him the the Jack position so he could do that more often. In short, he did a lot of things, and he did them all very well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a middle linebacker that could drop so effectively into deep coverage and still stuff the run.
So how do we replace someone like that? Well, there are different ways to do it, but here’s what I think should happen (I’m sure Coach Saban will be very interested in my opinion on this). I think we should simply insert Nico Johnson, true freshman out of Andalusia, into Hightower’s spot, and let him learn as he goes. Sure, there will be a dropoff as he learns (and probably after that since Hightower was such a special player), but Nico has an enormous amount of talent; he just needs the experience. If that’s how we handled this situation, everyone else could stay at their current position where they’re comfortable, and we would only have one position manned by a new person (and an extraordinarily talented person at that).
However, I don’t think that’s going to happen. What I think is going to happen is what we saw on Saturday after Hightower went down. We moved Anders from the Jack position to the Sam position, Upshaw came in to play the Jack position, and Reamer moved from the Sam to the Hightower’s Will position. So we effectively had three guys playing new positions Now don’t get me wrong; I don’t think that Saban is stupid for doing this or anything. These guys have a lot more experience than Johnson, and experience goes a long way in our complicated defensive scheme. It’s just that I would prefer to only make the one replacement, and let the rest of the defense (which has been stellar) stay as it is. Plus, as an added bonus, I’d love to see what Nico can do, because as I said before, Nico has as much raw talent as any linebacker we’ve had here in a long time, and I’m including both Hightower and McClain. It remains to be seen if our defense will be good enough for us to achieve our lofty goals for this season, but no matter how you look at, and regardless of what is decided from a personnel perspective, our defense won’t be as good without Hightower. You simply can’t lose a player of that caliber and not feel it.
So take care and hurry back, Dont’a. No matter what happens this season, you will definitely be remembered and missed.
Roll Tide,
Kenny
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