Alabama Football: The Perspective Offensive Outlook for 2010

The vaunted Alabama defense that carried them to the national title at the end of the 2009 season is reloading for 2010. They were ranked 10th in pass defense, 2nd in total, rush, and scoring defense. While there might have been room for improvement, there certainly was not much.

Alabama will be replacing nine out of 11 players on defense in 2010. While no one thinks the Alabama defense will simply fall off the charts, there is simply too much change to predict the translation to the field. It will take some games played to do that with any hope of accuracy.

The Alabama offense is another story all together. Most of the starters and play makers return for 2010. There is a lot of potential in this group.

What can Alabama fans expect?

In 2009 the Alabama offense was ranked 42nd in the nation. They were 92nd in passing offense, 22nd in scoring offense, and 12th in rushing offense. They were 36th in allowed sacks and 5th in the SEC.

There is certainly room for potential improvement there. Let us go back and see how this offense has progressed from the past. We will start in 2007 for obvious reasons.

In 2007 Alabama was ranked 75th in total offense, 60th in rushing offense, and 59th in passing offense. They were ranked 51st in allowed sacks and 7th in the SEC. This was certainly an offense that needed to improve.

In 2008 Alabama was ranked 97th in passing offense, 63rd in total offense and 30th in rushing offense. They were ranked 56th in allowed sacks and 7th in the SEC. This was also a unit that had room for improvement.

Rushing yardage:

2007: 1940 yds

2008: 2585 yds

2009: 3011 yds

This shows steady improvement. There was 625 yds of improvement between 2007 and 2008.

This would show a diminishing rate of improvement. There was a 48 ypg improvement in 2008 and a 30 ypg improvement in 2009. It would be reasonable to expect a 15 ypg improvement in 2010.  This would mean around 3200 yds of rushing in 2010.

While this is certainly not an exact science, it is reasonable to expect this improvement. This would place Alabama in the top ten in rushing for 2010 easily.

Passing yardage:

2007: 2919 yds. ,

2008: 1985 yds. 

2009: 2631 yds.

This is tied in with other statistics. In 2007 Alabama allowed 25 sacks, 2008 25 sacks, 2009 20 sacks. In 2007 there were 334 passing attempts, 2008 423 passing attempts, 2009 346 passing attempts. 

This shows that the commitment to the passing game declined with the improvement of the rushing offense. It also shows a big jump in effectiveness of the passing offense from 2008 to 2009.

There was nearly a doubling of gained yardage per pass attempt to 8.7 yds per attempt. This compares to 5 yds per attempt for the rushing offense. Clearly the place where most improvement could occur is in the passing game. 

Alabama ran 902 offensive plays in 2007, 962 in 2008, 947 in 2009. I think Alabama fans can assume the offensive tempo will remain steady at between 65 and 70 offensive plays per game.

Offensive balance for the Alabama coaching staff seems to be based on total yards not plays ran. I look for Alabama to improve about .2 yds. per offensive play in 2010 ( up from 5.96 yds per play to about 6.2 yds. per play).

This will likely still put them 4th in the SEC in yards gained per play, but would improve the total yards gained to around 6076 total yards of offense. This would likely be around 3200 yds rushing and 2876 yds passing. 

This would certainly move Alabama from 42nd in total offense into the top 20 for 2010. It will also make life easier for the defense in 2010. If your opponent does not have the ball, they can't score. 

Every improvement in offense will mean less plays that need to be made by the defense.