The Alabama Crimson Tide have had anything but a normal 2022 football season. The level of play that Alabama and college football fans are used to from the Crimson Tide just has not been there this year. With that being said, lets look at what has been wrong with the Crimson Tide and some adjustments they may need to make in order to continue being the standard of college football for years to come.
Defensive Adjustments
One of Alabama’s main problems this season has been their inability to adjust to the gameplan that an offense has. This was most evident in the Tennessee game when Tennessee was able to run the same few routes with Jalin Hyatt and have immense success. This issue was even present as recently as the Ole Miss game, when on back-to-back touchdown drives Ole Miss ran the same wildcat run with their running back and scored on both plays. While Alabama did manage to win this game, they were unable to win against Tennessee and LSU because of these problems.
There is also little to no adjustments made by cornerbacks when playing against receivers. In fact, it has gotten to the point where it seems like when a deep ball is thrown against Alabama it is either caught for a huge gain or there is a pass interference.
Bill O’Brien
Yes, Bill O’Brien is a bad enough problem to warrant having an entire section to himself. It is no secret that O’Brien has yet to find his niche at Alabama. It seems as though he is unable to draw up plays that work with the kind of players he has. Instead, he has his same system that he has used for years and is trying to squeeze all of these uber athletic players into plays that keep them from reaching their full potential.
As many problems as the defense has with adjustments, the offense has way more. Unless Alabama has only one minute left in the game, they are going to run a very similar play set that usually includes running the ball out of shotgun on 2nd and 10 or throwing a screen on first down. This level of predictability hurts the Crimson Tide offense more than anything else because it helps the defense key in on skill players that they know will get the ball on certain downs.
What they need to do better
Defense wise, this is simple, just adjust to what plays the offense is running. I understand that this sounds extremely basic but sometimes the most basic things are what’s wrong. If Alabama had adjusted defensively in the Tennessee and LSU games, they would most likely be undefeated.
The offensive adjustments desperately need to be focused on creating plays that tailor to the players who are playing. Also, the offense needs to give the best player on the field, Jahmyr Gibbs, the ball more.
The only problem with these corrections is that the offensive coordinator, Bill O’Brien, and defensive coordinator, Pete Goulding, have both been there long enough to have made changes by now. So in all likelihood the best solution is to replace those two and give the job to two people who are able to maximize the skill that these insanely talented players bring to the table.
