I actually was able to watch a fair amount of football on Friday and Saturday. Haven't dived into any boxscores and I've avoided most national shows today for obvious reasons.
Watched most of the AU/Baylor game at a party. Couldn't hear, but was able to pay attention decently well. I thought the AU OL did a good job of using their superior size to move the Baylor DL off the ball. Pretty disappointed in what Aranda's defense did, but maybe that was a reaction to AU. Jackson Arnold ran the ball well, but his passing was still pretty shaky from my seat. If they don't get the pass game going, I could see them struggling against the defenses with better players on their schedule. They looked decent on run d, thought the pass d was atrocious. Definitely the weak part of their team so far. But good W for a program and coach that desperately needed it
Texas: Like most, was pretty surprised at how Arch looked. I was skeptical of him being the Heisman front-runner, but I thought it would be better than what we saw. I'm sure it will be better eventually. Tough place to make your first start as the face of the program, plus those expectations. Looked like Sark and Day called the game to protect their young QBs. Defense looked good. Not a disqualifying loss by any stretch
LSU looked like the class of the SEC last night. I was skeptical of those picking LSU so high, and I know it's only one game, but you have to like where they are compared to the other contenders in the conference after one game.
Saw bits and pieces of some of the other games, I'm not sure there's a whole lot to learn from the teams who took care of business against far inferior teams.
Wasn't able to watch the South Carolina game, but I saw they pulled away after being somewhat close into the 3rd quarter. I'm sure ETG could provide some context
And that wraps up everything I saw yesterday.
Just kidding. Listen, I don't have much to add about Alabama's performance that most people could see with their own eyes. It's not that concerning that we loss so much as it's concerning that we didn't look ready to play. This isn't game 10 against some scrub team. I don't care who you are playing, you should be pumped up for game one of the season, and we appear to have too many guys that looked like they didn't want to be there. I don't know what the problem is. It's easy to point and say that De Boer is the problem, and that may be correct, but there are too many other variables to pinpoint the main issue. It is De Boer's job to fix it though, so how he handles this will dictate how long he stays employed. He has a $60MM buyout, so any talk of firing him is pointless for one, and two, would be a guaranteed way to set the program back more. I don't get the sense that the administration is overly concerned, but most of the fanbase is apoplectic right now. I think the 2 things that bother me the most about the De Boer era are that we seemingly game plan very very vanilla for teams we are supposed to beat. Our opponents are going to throw everything they have at us, we can't be worried about keeping things off of film because of future opponents. Two, we play too many players, especially on defense. Our participation chart probably looks like we were playing an FCS teams and were up 50 in the 3rd quarter. But we had a true freshman CB and backup safety in on the first drive when we gave up a long pass play on 3rd and long. We had 3rd string players in at some positions in the 3rd quarter. I'm all for getting guys experience, but similar to my first point, we can't jeopardize the game we're playing that day because we're worried about saving their legs for a potential 16 game season. We are only guaranteed 12 games, and we need to act like the only game that matters is the next one. I never thought the La Monroe game would be so important, but I think we can learn a lot about what this team will be moving forward
