A brilliant second-half effort by Alabama's defense should have led to the Crimson Tide running away with Saturday's game against Vanderbilt. Tied at 14 coming out of the locker room, Alabama's defense forced back-to-back punts and only seven total plays on Vanderbilt's first two possessions.
Unfortunately, Alabama's offense could only muster six points on two field goals. Ty Simpson and the offense had little trouble moving the ball between the 20s, but struggled mightily deep in Vanderbilt territory, which kept the game within striking distance for the Commodores for much longer than it should've been.
Alabama's two third-quarter drives totaled 17 plays and 134 total yards, but they had to settle for two Connor Talty field goals that kept the game in doubt.
On the first drive, a questionable 3rd-and-5 play call by Grubb was the primary culprit. Germie Bernard took a direct snap with Simpson split out wide. Bernard lost three yards, and Alabama was forced to kick. Bernard didn't execute the run properly; he had room up the middle had he cut it back up, but taking the ball out of Simpson's hands made little sense at the time or in retrospect.
Simpson made a critical mistake on the next drive, taking a brutal sack on first down when he had plenty of time to throw the ball away. That put the Crimson Tide in a 2nd-and-20 situation that they couldn't recover from.
Instead of a two-touchdown lead, Alabama led only 20-14 early in the fourth quarter, leaving the door open for Pavia and Vanderbilt to have a chance to steal the game. Fortunately for Simpson and Grubb, Alabama's defense consistently answered the bell.
Ryan Grubb says Alabama's red zone execution was 'discouraging'
"I thought our red zone execution was poor," Grubb told reporters on Monday. "For us, we've still got to understand we can't press in those moments. The previous two weeks, we'd done a good job in the red zone. To see us take a step back was discouraging."
Grubb went on to vow that things would be better this week against Missouri.
As well as Simpson is playing right now, the scary part for the rest of college football is that Alabama's offense still isn't quite clicking on all cylinders. The run game is coming around, as evidenced by Jam Miller's 136 rushing yards against Vanderbilt, but they are still leaving points out there on the football field.
Once that ends, and everything fully clicks, good luck stopping this group.