Stats show Alabama has to clean up penalties to win a championship

It is no secret to Alabama fans, and the rest of College Football, that this team has a penalty problem. A pretty significant one. Although, it seems like after the past two games it has not been talked about nearly as much.

Two very convincing wins in a row will do that. But just like when you clean your room by throwing everything in the closet, the room isn't truly clean. And eventually, you have to clean the closet out too, or the piles of clothes and clutter will start showing itself again. In their dominating win over LSU, the game looked great on the surface but the mess is still there. The penalties are just concealed by the overwhelming victory. Truly an incredible analogy by me and you know it.

So I went back and looked at the penalty stats of every National Championship-winning team from the 4 team playoff era and looked at how this year's Alabama team compares. Here are the stats from those teams in a nifty little chart I made. All these stats came from Team Rankings. You can pretty much validate any theory you have over there. Anyway here's that chart from my Twitter/X account. Maybe give it a follow if you like anything you read. It'd be very cool of you.

Here's what stands out to me. First, last year's Michigan team was either insanely disciplined or very fortunate when it came to calls from the referees. I suppose that it might be easier to avoid penalties when you know what play is coming before it happens (allegedly).

Two, the worst championship team in terms of penalties was LSU in 2019. One of the most prolific offenses in College Football history can cover a lot of that up. Three, the winning teams were not as good in regards to penalties as I thought they would be. The lowest number of penalties per game by a team in that time frame was tied 1st (Michigan) and the worst was 78th (LSU). The average national rank of these teams was 45th. That would all sound promising for Alabama, right? Not after my next expertly created graphic.

That's right. This year's Alabama team, through 9 games, is averaging over 2 more penalties a game than the worst National Championship team in the CFP era. They are also averaging 16 more penalty yards per game than that same worst team. Those numbers currently have Alabama ranked 129th in penalties per game and 130th in penalty yards per game. There are only 134 teams in the FBS. My expert analysis as a part-time blogger is that is not very good.

And like I said, wins can cover all of that up for a time. But the issue is still there. In the loss to Tennessee, Alabama had 15 penalties for 115 yards. You probably aren't going to win many games doing that. Then things looked better against Missouri when the team committed just 5 penalties for 55 yards. Not perfect, but much better. Against LSU they had 7 for 74. Granted, a few of those happened when the game was well in hand, but they still happened. It doesn't matter when they happened or who committed them. They were still there.

Now, it is true that numbers never lie. That's what I've always heard I'm not smart enough to tell you if that's really 100% true. But I can tell you that numbers are at times misleading. For instance, in 2014 Alabama was tied 29th in penalties per game. Ohio State was ranked 49th. They matched up in the semi-finals and penalty stats obviously did not determine that game. Alabama lost and Ohio State went on to win the National Championship. Likewise in 2019, Clemson was the 32nd ranked team in penalties per game. LSU didn't seem to notice that in the championship game.

Even still, this Alabama team is so much worse than any of those teams penalty-wise. I was a little disheartened seeing how bad they are. Sure, the Tennessee game hurts the numbers and the last two games have been better than that. But, over their last 3 games Alabama is tied for the worst team in the country with 9.7 penalties per game. Again my professional opinion says that is not good. But Coach DeBoer has started showing more fire on the sidelines. And I believe that you can attribute the improvement, at least in part, to that change. Looks a little like another guy we know who had some success here.

Not to count any eggs in any basket, but this weekend against Mercer would be a great time to get some of these issues cleaned up. And I don't want to leave all my fellow Alabama fans feeling too discouraged, so here's an uplifting stat. Alabama now leads the SEC in yards per carry with 5.2 per attempt. That's fun! Establish the run! Also, the defense is 4th overall in takeaways per game with 2.3 per game. Defense wins championships! And this defense is starting to look more championship-caliber. So it's not all bad, let's just stop with the personal fouls, please. For our collective health.