Alabama's Loss to Utah Not on Account of Disrespect and Lack of Preparation!

When is everyone going to quit blaming Bama's loss to Utah on not respecting Utah and not being prepared to play?

I think our guys were as prepared to play as they could have been. Maybe some of the guys on the team were shocked at how good Utah really was, especially after Utah's fast start and after all that they had heard about Utah, but I think they were ready to play.

Losing Andre Smith from the offensive line was devastating to the offense's performance, and then to have another lineman go down early during the game with an injury certainly hurt Bama's chances to be successful on offense. But Utah has a real good defense, certainly SEC caliber, and it wasn't going to be an easy task even if all things had gone perfectly for Bama.

Utah plays the spread like Florida, but they play a more passing scheme spread than Florida's and one that Bama's defense didn't match up well with in hindsight. The best chance Bama had at beating Utah would have been to have success offensively, which they didn't.

I don't think Bama's players and certainly not the coaches disrespected Utah. I think they were shocked at how good Utah played to start out, and it took them by surprise, but I don't think Bama ever disrespected Utah.

I know what some of the players said in the postmortem, but I doubt they really disrespected Utah. I think a lot of what they said was just making excuses for the shock they were in for being beaten as they were. Remember, these players are basically kids in grown bodies.

Yes, teams have off nights, and Bama sure didn't look ON! But you would think that they would be ready to play a game in such an environment after such a long layoff and after having suffered a defeat in their last outing. I mean, football is a game, and what kid doesn't like to play games? They were ready to play, I promise you!

Maybe they were a little rusty, I don't know—but anything other than saying that they got beat by a better team is just making excuses and in my mind demeans Utah's win more than anything that was said before the game was played.
 
They fought hard in the game though and did all they could to come back, but it just wasn't good enough to make it happen with that big a hole that they were in. Bama was out of their element when they had to play catch up from that far down, and I knew it was probably game over at the end of the first quarter for that reason. But they never quit!

I have read and heard Saban's comments before and after the game, and frankly, if you want to you can take them just about any way you want. But I doubt coach Saban would ever disrespect another team, even one that Bama is clearly better than, on purpose. And Bama clearly is not better than Utah! Maybe had they played earlier in the season they could have beaten Utah, especially with their offensive line intact, but not with their best team unit depleted as it was in the Sugar Bowl.

I don't think anything said prior to the game by coach Saban or the media had any effect on the game either. I really think Utah would have been highly motivated to play Bama regardless of what was said one way or the other. This was their chance to prove to the world how good they really are.

I suppose it's a shock that the second-best team in the SEC could be beaten by an undefeated MWC champion, especially with all the SEC hype that's been going on lately, but it shouldn't be. Bama, for Christ sakes, lost to UL-Monroe just over a year ago. Bama is one season removed from a 7-6 season counting the bowl win against Colorado.

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