Alabama Football: Just How Good Is the Alabama Defense This Season?

Larry Burton (Syndicated Writer) The preseason is a time to speculate about a team's chances for success; to measure them against the other teams they will play and the teams they hope to play against in the postseason.

But what about measuring them against their own teams of the past?

Almost every football pundit and prognosticator knows this 2011 Alabama team will be a good one. Of that there is no doubt. But is this a team that could challenge the stats put up by the 1992 team, for example?

If you went player by player through the first two strings, you'd have to say yes.

Want facts to back that claim up? Five of the 11 starters on this defensive squad are projected to be on the watch list for the Bednarik Award. That is not an award for the best player at his position. That is an award given to the best defensive player in all of college football.

Those experts think Alabama has five people on one team who could earn that award. That's just crazy talent on one team. Some teams have had two players, but this team has almost half their starters on it.

It's just frightening to opponents.

Those five are Dont'a Hightower, Courtney Upshaw, Dre Kirkpatrick, Robert Lester and, of course, Mark Barron.

Eric Curry and John Copeland were two great players up front. George Teague and Sam Shade were the defensive back studs on the 1992 team. Those was their four big stars. Of those four, Shade may be the only player that doesn't at least measure up to his 2011 counterpart. 

So that's only three players from the 1992 list of defensive "stars" that might be on par with the five on the Bednarik Award watch list from this year.

Curry, Copeland and Teague were the only first rounders from that whole team in the 1993 NFL draft and no one from that defense went in the second round. Antonio London, an outside linebacker, went in the third round and Derek Oden, another linebacker, went in Round 6.

That was five players through the first six rounds.

Josh Chapman (nose tackle) will go in Rounds 2 or 3, Hightower and Upshaw should go in Round 1 and Jerrell Harris should go between Rounds 3 and 5 from the linebacker corps.

Dre Kirkpatrick could go Round 1, Menzie could go in Rounds 3 to 4 and Phelon Jones could go in Round seven or so; these boys are all from the cornerback corps.

Lastly, Mark Barron could easily go in Round 1 or 2, and if Robert Lester chose to leave early, he could be a Round 3- to 4-pickup.

That's eight players who go could go in the NFL's top rounds as opposed to the five from 1992.

And then there's the depth issue.

The talent backing these starters simply blows the bench away from the 1992 team. To even argue that point proves you don't know football very well, or at least Alabama football.

While nothing has been proven yet, this team certainly shapes up to be one of the best. Only time will answer the question to everyone's satisfaction.