Alabama Football: Tide Can't Afford a Slow Start vs. Auburn

Do slow starts happen, sometimes to even the best of the best? Of course.

Do the great teams find ways to overcome them? You bet.

But the fact that Alabama, which beat Western Carolina 48-14 on Saturday, fell behind 7-0 early in the first quarter and was leading just 17-14 with under seven minutes to play in the first half, is at least to some degree disconcerting one week before the Iron Bowl.

That kind of slow start against the Tigers will see the Tide down two scores, and 38 first-half points probably aren't going to come against Auburn.

So what was behind Alabama's slow start on Saturday?

Well, the Catamounts mounted an impressive opening drive to start the game, going 75 yards in nine plays in just three seconds over three minutes to take a 7-0 lead.

Against Auburn, that's the type of drive that'll set the tone for an entire game.

Late in the first quarter, after taking a 10-7 lead, Blake Sims threw an interception that spoiled a drive that began at the Western Carolina 40-yard line.

Then, while leading 17-7 early in the second quarter, Alabama running back Derrick Henry fumbled away the ball inside its own 20, and Western Carolina found the end zone on the next play, putting the score at 17-14.

For nearly 25 minutes of game clock on Saturday, Western Carolina hung around with the dynastic Crimson Tide.

The mistakes that Alabama made against Western Carolina will be magnified to their very extremes against Auburn, and that kind of start simply won't cut it against your archrival.

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What's worse is that the Tigers feast off other teams' mistakes. Against Kansas State, a game Auburn won by just six points on the road, the Wildcats had three turnovers. Auburn scored—you guessed it—six points off those turnovers.

The only time it didn't score off a K-State mistake was an interception in its own end zone that kept six points off the board.

In Auburn's 35-31 win over then-No. 4 Ole Miss, the Tigers recovered a fumble with their backs to the wall at their own 6-yard line. Then on their very next stand, and backed up again inside the red zone, was the now infamous Laquon Treadwell fumble at the goal line that Auburn fell on.

The Tide's offense is super-powered this year, averaging 35 points per game behind Sims, who's thrown for 20 touchdowns and just four picks. That's good enough to mask mistakes against teams like Western Carolina.

But scoring 35 points hasn't come easy against the top dogs of the SEC for the Tide. Against Ole Miss, Mississippi State and LSU this year, Alabama averages just 22.6 points per game and hasn't scored more than 25.

Expect a similar scoring output from Auburn, a team that's given up just 25 points per game heading into this week.

The Tigers have three losses and are basically out of the playoff hunt, but they're still dangerous. Plus, all the semantics of rankings and history go out the window in the Iron Bowl—that game is about pride, and whoever plays smarter next week will win that game.

For Alabama, that means a slow, mistake-filled start like it had against Western Carolina could prove to be the death of its playoff hopes as well.