Alabama Football: Time for Tide Offensive Line To Do Some Soul Searching

Alabama enters the off week badly in need of rest and healing.  It gives the staff and the obsessed among us time to ponder what is going on.  

Taking the 2009 season as a standard to this point and comparing the numbers it becomes evident,  Alabama must become more physical at the point of attack on offense. 

For all the belly aching fans and myself have been doing the 'Bama passing game, it is ahead of the pace it set last year.   With slightly fewer attempts (eight) Alabama has produced a 19 percent increase in yards and two more touchdowns. 

For sure Greg McElroy has struggled at times, but he appears to be pulling free from the slump quicker and the upside may be more going forward than last year.   While many of us hoped to see some wild improvements in the passing game, truth is, they are better and better is good.

The Alabama running game, however, is another matter entirely.

Last year, Mark Ingram was the unquestioned starter and Trent Richardson came in as backup. This year they are essentially co-starters. 

Taken as a collective their rush attempts have dropped a full 25 percent.   To put this number in perspective,  Roy Upchurch played a good bit last year on third down.  Ingram and Richardson take practically every snap of the game.

It gets worse,  though the opportunities have dropped by a quarter the production in yardage is 42 percent off pace from last year. 

For Richardson, his yards are at 66 percent of last year's production to this point,  Ingram's rush yards are almost cut in half at around 55 percent.

Though there may be many reasons for this there are three observations that I cannot avoid. 

Ingram is not 100%

This is not the same Mark Ingram we saw last year or in preseason.  I'm telling you during fall camp this guy was changing directions so fast they needed to put his name on both sides of the Jersey. 

He is still running hard and running physical, but he's not running like he did before the injury. I don't question his heart,  If the man is hurt, there isn't much anyone can do about it. It's clearly an injury that only time will heal or he would have been rested by now. Most ongoing injuries we will never hear a peep from the Alabama staff until after the season.

Richardson has been dinged up as well

For a few weeks Richardson wore a black boot without explanation, and I noticed a distinct drop in oh-wow moments from him. I don't know how that is coming along but whatever it was, it has not affected his speed. His game-breaking speed is still there, and we have seen it twice recently.  I believe he may have a great second half of the season.  At this point it's hard not to believe he should be the starter, but pass-blocking also figures into this equation. Starting or not, Ingram and Richardson are a team and only together can they get well.

Both backs appear to be running with more physical authority lately.  I noticed against Tennessee for the first time in a while piles moving backward.  This has nothing to do with who you are playing. It's just as hard to move a bunch of 2-star defenders backwards as it is 5-star. Some things are just about effort.

The Offensive Line

On paper these guys should be even more physical than last year, but they just aren't.   Mike Johnson was a vocal leader on the line and they may may miss his leadership.   D.J. Fluker on paper looks like an upgrade to former starting tackle Drew Davis, but he's been out for a few weeks.

Even before that as a unit they are not blowing open holes like last year. They aren't a bad line by any stretch, their pass-blocking has been good at times though it's been complicated by the fact that teams felt safe blitzing virtually any player or all of them at once.  

Up until halftime of the Tennessee game the run-blocking had been less than spectacular. Lots of talk in the press, same thing on the field.

The line came out the second half of the Tennessee game, and took it to the Volunteers.  Granted, this is a bad Tennessee team, but talent was never the problem,  intensity may have been.  I don't know what was said in that Knoxville locker room, but the next half of football was the best the line has played since Arkansas. 

Clearly it needed to get personal in the clubhouse, and someone apparently did.

Out in the country they used to have these "old-time" tent revivals. Where you show up and sit in a folding chair on a bed of mud and straw next to a gas heater that sounds like it's going to launch into space. 

The preacher is preaching fire from the pulpit that makes the heater look tame by comparison. Some of you can remember what I'm talking about.  One thing you didn't hear from the preacher were excuses for doing wrong.

Alabama's offensive line needs an old-fashioned revival, and they need it against LSU.  The question is who is going to stoke the fire? This isn't something a coach can do for them. Joe Pendry is a great coach, one of the best in the business. But the line wins its battles on the field, and they have to do it together.

Alabama can't get to Atlanta with a 42 percent drop in production to the very identity that the program is built upon. The passing game and defense can't absorb that sort of drop off.

This is Alabama, a physical running game is not an option, it's THE option, as in you do that or you don't come to Alabama.   They have the right guys in there.  It's time for them to take it to the next level and get it done.

No matter what condition Ingram and Richardson are in, if the line makes the holes, they are going to hit them, and they are going to punish the secondary trying to bring them down. Alabama's defense is coming along nicely, but control of any games starts and ends with the offensive line.