Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college football, where New Mexico ran the play of the week:
First Quarter: This Is Not an Overreaction—It’s Legit Bad at Alabama
It’s only one game, the cautious will claim. Except it’s not. Alabama (1) is trending very badly, and has been for nearly 11 months.
The numbers are stark and unforgiving for Kalen DeBoer (2): a 9–5 overall record, 1–3 in the last four games, 5–5 in the last 10. But it gets worse when you dig into that record.
Since defeating Georgia on Sept. 28 to start 4–0 last year—a game in which the Crimson Tide were unstoppable in the first half and hung on for dear life in the second—DeBoer’s team isn’t just losing games. It’s losing handily to largely mediocre teams. It is playing lousy road football. It is being pushed around and meekly surrendering.
The loss at Vanderbilt (3) last year: Alabama never led, and trailed for 53 minutes and 46 seconds. Vandy, while much improved over recent editions, finished 7–6.
The loss at Tennessee (4): actually the Tide’s best performance in defeat under DeBoer, by a touchdown on the road against what would be a playoff team. But Alabama couldn’t even produce a single first down in its final four possessions with the game on the line.
The loss at Oklahoma (5): completely outplayed by a bad Sooners team that would finish 6–7. Alabama trailed for the final 30:37 and was outrushed 257–70.
The loss in the bowl game to Michigan (6): ‘Bama never led and trailed for the final 53:15 against a 7–5 team that had eight key players opt out of the game.
The Saturday loss at Florida State (7): Alabama trailed for the final 39:13, most of it by double digits. The Tide were outrushed 230–87. The opposing quarterback, Tommy Castellanos, ran his mouth to a remarkable degree in the offseason (“They don’t have Nick Saban to save them”) and Bama didn’t come close to making him eat his words.
It’s quite possible that Florida State is in the third stage of a rare, boom-bust-boom cycle The Seminoles might end up being very good, after massive offseason changes to the coaching staff and the roster. But Alabama also was supposed to be very good, with a roster the NFL is dying to draft.
Instead, the Tide keep getting punked.
It would cost in the neighborhood of $70 million to fire DeBoer during or after this season, an outrageous number that would curdle the stomach of athletic director Greg Byrne. The only way that happens is if this season spirals into complete disaster territory, and even then it would threaten to cripple the athletic department. (Alabama is not Texas A&M when it comes to profligate spending.)
Other scapegoats can and will be found if necessary. The current primary target of fan ire seems to be defensive coordinator Kane Wommack, whose team ranked 11th in the SEC last year in run defense and is dead last in the league after one game this year. New offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb has a longer grace period.
But Alabama has to show its fans something. Particularly on the road.
Perhaps Bama’s weird hold on Kirby Smart’s psyche will continue, and the Crimson Tide will win between the hedges at the end of September. Perhaps Alabama handles its two Columbia trips in October—the Missouri Tigers haven’t come close to beating the Tide since joining the SEC, and the South Carolina Gamecocks haven’t done it since 2010. Perhaps they win the Iron Bowl on The Plains, despite the history of struggle there in recent visits.
But those are a lot of maybes that all run counter to who Alabama has been for most of the DeBoer tenure. Following Nick Saban was never a great idea, and it’s looking especially futile now.
It Ain’t Great at Clemson, Either
The two programs that defined the four-team College Football Playoff era have lost a lot of their juice. In Alabama’s case, that can easily and directly be tied to the retirement of Saban. In the case of Clemson (8), the head coach is still there but still playing by the old rules.
Dabo Swinney (9) has a winning program—he won the ACC last year and snuck into the first 12-team playoff as the 12th seed—but it’s not like the glory days. A lot of people rather arbitrarily (wishfully?) declared the Tigers to be back this season as a national title contender. Proof of that concept was not delivered Saturday night.
Clemson lost to LSU (10), which in a vacuum is not a bad loss. But this was also a victory for a coach who got active in the transfer portal—a lot of football observers said Brian Kelly pulled in the best transfer class in the nation—over one who remains reluctant about quick-turn roster reloads. A lot was made about Swinney signing a handful of transfers this offseason for the first time, but only one of them (linebacker Will Heidt) was a factor Saturday. LSU, meanwhile, had transfers play key roles on both lines and in the secondary.
The loss also continues Clemson’s inability to beat top-shelf competition the way it did when Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence were playing quarterback. The Tigers fancy themselves an SEC-level program, but they’ve now lost four straight to four different teams from that league over the last 15 games—Georgia by 31 in Atlanta, South Carolina at home by three, Texas by 14 in the playoff and LSU at home by seven.
Clemson’s lone quality win in that span was over SMU in the ACC championship game on a 56-yard field goal on the final play. The Tigers also were thoroughly beaten at home last year by Louisville.
Saturday night, as Death Valley East gradually waned from deafening to dejected, Clemson was throughly outplayed in the second half. It ran the ball just four times in the final two quarters, none of them in the fourth, becoming completely one-dimensional and being shut out in the process. Clemson’s longest run of the game was seven yards.
This was Swinney’s third straight opening loss, and he’s managed to turn things around quickly after the other two. He remains, as always, resolutely optimistic.
"I don't have any doubt," he said. "I really believe this is going to be one heck of a football team when it's all said and done.
He has 11 games to prove it. A Sept. 13 game at Georgia Tech looms large, as do games in the back half of the schedule against SMU, Duke, Florida State, Louisville and the Gamecocks.
College Football Playoff Bracket—Hold Please
The Dash is holding this week’s College Football Playoff bracket until all precincts have reported. Check back after Virginia Tech-South Carolina, Notre Dame-Miami and TCU-North Carolina for that.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Forde-Yard Dash: Can It Get Much Worse for Kalen DeBoer’s Alabama?.
