Tennessee Trip Perfect Solution to Alabama's Road Woes

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — It’s been a tale of two Alabamas during the 2014 season.

There’s home Alabama and road Alabama. Home Alabama looks unbeatable, breaking records and grinding offenses into a fine dust. Road Alabama looks like it would finish toward the bottom of the SEC West.

The Crimson Tide is in the middle of a stretch of four in five games away from Bryant-Denny Stadium. They seemed to let out a lot of their frustration in their one home game during that run on Saturday, obliterating Texas A&M, 59-0.

But this week, Alabama will get back on an airplane and head to Knoxville before a bye week and subsequent trip to Baton Rouge to finish out the 2014 away schedule.

That game at LSU is massive for Alabama’s SEC West chances. It almost certainly can’t lose another game, especially before ending the season with Mississippi State and Auburn at home. And Tiger Stadium is always a difficult place to play.

But Alabama first gets to play a very down Tennessee team. It will be a great opportunity to fix its road woes before that huge trip to LSU.

Statistic	Home	Away
Yards per play	7.87	4.9
Points per game	48.5	15.5
Yards against per play	3.75	4.7
Points against per game	8.3	18

*Note: Table data only include statistics from true road games, so Alabama's season opener against West Virginia in the Georgia Dome was not included.

It’s difficult to pinpoint one overarching reason Alabama has played subpar on the road.

The main one players point to is emotion, or lack thereof, and how that translates onto the field. Senior fullback Jalston Fowler thought the team was playing “like we were scared to lose.”

There was a spark in emotion, though, at the end of the Arkansas game. After Landon Collins’ late interception, players streamed onto the field in celebration. Nick Saban said that’s the most emotion he’s seen from his team in a long time and that it was good to see players celebrate simply getting a win.

So Saban came up with an analogy (along with some help from back-to-back national champion men’s golf coach Jay Seawell): “Let the horse run.” It comes from the movie, Seabiscuit, referring to a horse whose owners were too scared to lose instead of just letting it, well, run.

And run did they ever. The Alabama-Texas A&M box score reads like a video game. There was no shortage of that coveted emotion.

Now, the challenge becomes carrying that over into another week—and the rest of the season.

“That's everybody's choice. Everybody chooses their energy,” Saban said this week. “That's everybody's choice. Hopefully, our team will choose that kind of positive energy, that kind of positive attitude in terms of what they want to build on, what they want to accomplish. And understand the importance of good energy early in the week to have great preparation so they are confident going into the game and feel you can execute and do the things you need to do.”

Brynn Anderson/Associated Press

The other factor that could be looked at is simply inexperience and the lack of execution that follows.

According to Phil Steele’s combined experience chart (h/t ESPN’s Alex Scarborough), which calculates how young a team his, Alabama checks in at No. 107 out of 128 FBS teams. 

The Crimson Tide is also breaking in a new quarterback and new offensive coordinator. Having all of that working together, especially in a hostile environment, is certainly a challenge. 

“The quarterback is the starting point of all that to manage the game,” Saban said. “His in and out of the right plays and make the right checks. I think that all starts with the preparation. I think it's really, really important to have great preparation this week because it is a challenge we have to overcome, especially offensively.

"I think it's going to be really important we play really, really good on defense as well because they have a really good defensive team. It's going to be a challenge for us offensively, being able to execute the way we need to, to have success.”

All of that will certainly be in play again this week in front of a hostile Tennessee crowd fired up by a major rivalry game and the return of a certain maligned coach in those parts.

But the Volunteers aren't expected to pose much of a threat in terms of competition. Tennessee is still looking for its first SEC West win.

Alabama can put criticisms of its past road performances behind it with a strong showing on Saturday. And in the process prepare for an even bigger test two weeks later.

“After what we did this past week, I'm ready to see what we can do on the road,” quarterback Blake Sims said. “Show everybody we can bring it from home and take it on the road and keep the same intensity.”

Marc Torrence is the Alabama lead writer for Bleacher Report. All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.

Follow on Twitter @marctorrence.