Alabama Football: The Tide Can't Execute the Plan All the Time, Neither Do We

Well folks, Bacardi and I were in a Winn-Dixie Parking lot this weekend and and saw a young child who had gotten away from his mom who had turned her back on him for just a moment while putting groceries in her car.

The young child was too young and too small to see he was about to walk between two cars in right in front of a car that was traveling too fast for a parking lot.

The mother saw it too late and screamed. I was closer so I ran and jumped the buggy corral to get the the child and grab him before it was too late. But at 53, I didn't clear it as well I would have a few years ago and hit the ground like a sack of concrete with Bacardi doing the smart thing and running underneath it after me.

I got two fingers in the toddler's collar on an up-reach and pulled him back just in time, and Bacardi almost got hit but managed to stop just in time.

With a cracked rib, two bruised knees, a bump on the head and a racing heart, I held the boy till his mother came to get him while sitting in a grocery store parking lot with my back against a dirty Suburban trying to gather my wits.

Driving home, it hit me that what happened to Bacardi and me is just like a football team.

We see what's about to take place, we think we know what we're doing, but sometimes the execution doesn't quite match the plan we have in our head.

We think we're capable of things that we might do sometimes but not all the time.

Our bodies hurt because of our inability to keep ourselves in the condition we need to be in to accomplish our plans and lastly, we learned that we can accomplish our main goal while still losing at other things that we fail to be able to accomplish the main goal the next time.

At the end of last season, I wrote with exuberance how the coaches were telling me that this was a very talented team, perhaps with more raw talent that last year's and even more raw athleticism, and I couldn't wait to pass all this along to the readers.

Take our defensive backs as a great example. This group was faster overall, taller and had more promise than last year's group.

They had a plan, they had their conditioning down, but just like my execution of jumping buggy corrals, their execution also left much to be desired.

Leaving Reuben Randall, LSU's best receiver running down the field uncovered with no one even close was the same lack of confusion and poor execution that I showed in my parking lot plummet.

Unlike the Tide, I was still able to to win the final goal, but at what price?

This week Alabama tries to pick themselves up from their bad landing too. But sore and frustrated, they must go back into battle against a team with a deadly defense and a capable top 20 group of men who show no fear in playing the Crimson Tide.

I know right now, I couldn't chase down a granny in a wheelchair with my bruised knees.

Can Alabama chase down another win against another top 20 opponent?

Can they take a plan and finally execute it as Nick Saban and staff lay it out for them?

What happened this weekend may have slowed my writing and my work and refurbishing a new office building we just bought, but it did make me realize the difference between what I thought I could easily do and what I would actually do. I learned that a good plan is a great thing to have, but the real trick is execution.

Let's hope Alabama came to the same conclusions, and we all can avoid more miscues.