For anyone who has played football you understand and remember the games where you just got whooped the entire game in all phases. On Monday night that is exactly what happened to the Alabama Football team.
Let’s be clear Alabama football fans. Monday night was the worst loss not only under Saban, but I would argue in program history. On the biggest stage, with the best offense in school history, the Alabama Football team got it handed to them by Clemson. Alabama is really fortunate that they only lost by 28. Clemson easily could have dropped 60+ points on that defense. So let’s discuss what went wrong and why.
Turnovers
Tua Tagovailoa’s interceptions may be the only turnovers that appear on the statistics sheet but when you also count the three times the Crimson Tide were stopped on downs it brings the total to five.
Want to know why turnovers killed the Tide?
Clemson scored a touchdown on each turnover except the last turnover on downs. Of which Clemson could have scored again they just chose to run the ball to chew clock with game secured rather than try to embarrass Alabama further.
First, of these five turnovers, let’s look at Tagovailoa’s picks, the first being the pick six. Two big components go into this, the first being the awful play call and second, the throw itself.
Mike Locksley went to the barrel too many times in a row and it ultimately burned him.
The first two RPO plays went for significant gains. I expected on the third play to either run or take a shot deep. Why? Because now you have corners that have been beaten twice and are now playing the RPO. Which causes them to be more aggressive in their positioning underneath, which occurred on the blitz and led to the interception.
We will return to play calling in a moment as it was atrocious throughout the game, but this was the first occurrence.
The second factor was Tagovailoa’s pass was behind the receiver.
On a route that the receiver is running away from the quarterback and the defender is trailing him. If you are going to miss you have to miss in front of the receiver and away from the corner. Tagovailoa’s pass did the opposite. Which led to the pass being right at the corner who capitalized and took it to the house.
Tagovailoa’s second interception was him trying to do too much and a terrible decision. Jeudy ran a go route in the slot position, which if the safety sits down in the coverage, opens the route for a touchdown. However, the safety played his over the top responsibility and took the route away. Yet Tagovailoa forced the pass and missed deep, which led to it falling right into the safety’s hands. Really a terrible decision combined with a bad throw led to the pick.