Alabama Football: Report Card Grades for the Crimson Tide's Loss vs. LSU

Tonight was Alabama's chance to unseat LSU as the No. 1 team in the country. It has been touted as "the game of the century."

I'm not sure I'd go quite that far. There have been some pretty epic battles in the last 30 years or so, let alone the last century.

Still, this was a whale of a game that lived up to the hype. If you were a defensive fan, you had to have been salivating throughout this game. There weren't a lot of sacks, but there were tons of hard hits, more than a couple turnovers and every yard had to be fought for exceptionally hard.

In the end, Alabama fell short, losing 6-9 in overtime. Epic, it was. Best of the Century, I'm not so sure.

Both teams made some mistakes, but ultimately Alabama's mistakes were more costly. An interception at the goal line handed back what would have surely been the game's only touchdown. A couple of penalties gave away first downs and/or hampered the Tide's offense when they could ill-afford to be moving backward.

Even the coaching was a little peculiar. I'm a big fan of Nick Saban's, but I have some choice words for a couple of calls and feel that he was out-coached by Les Miles in this game. That doesn't happen often and I wouldn't wager you'll see it again soon.

To say it was a disappointing night for Tide fans is an understatement. Calling it strange might not be out of order either.

Looking at the loss unit-by-unit, let's grade the Tide performance in the "game of the century."

Quarterbacks

Nobody with any real feel for this game expected A.J. McCarron to have a career statistical day against the Tigers. He didn't.

A pick in the third quarter put his defense in a bad situation, with their backs against the wall and LSU already inside the red zone. Luckily, his team bailed him out and allowed only a field goal.

For the most part, McCarron was careful with the ball. Few passes were launched long or into heavy coverage. He dropped off a lot of screens and short passes into the flat to simply keep the ball moving. He let his receivers take care of the yardage after the catch.

Marquis Maze is also credited with a fourth quarter interception, but he's no quarterback. That was Nick Saban trying to beat Les Miles at his own game and having it backfire.

McCarron ultimately had a rough outing. He completed 16-of-28 passes for 199 yards and threw that interception. LSU didn't give his receivers much room to move and he didn't have enough time to do a lot with what he had.

The Tide offense fell flat and McCarron was no exception.

Grade: C

Running Backs

Trent Richardson grabbed hold of a perfect opportunity to boost his Heisman hopes against a tough rushing defense. He didn't disappoint.

Richardson and Lacey both carved up the LSU defense early. It wasn't easy sledding, don't get me wrong. At times, the runs were brutally physical with the backs hammering their way into defenders piling into the holes.

At other times, they danced their way around would-be tacklers and sprinted for decent gains.

On top of all of that, Trent Richardson was vicious catching passes out of the backfield.

For a stretch during the third quarter, neither runner could make any headway. The Tiger defense plugged the holes and took away the running lanes. It was starting to look pretty ugly there for a while.

The thing about Richardson (and Lacy to a degree), is that he refuses to give up and refuses to go down. He kept digging and kept hammering away at the Tiger defense. He just couldn't ultimately find enough room to break off that huge run that would open things up.

On the day, Richardson was held to 89 yards on 23 carries for a pedestrian 3.9 average. Lacy averaged only 3.8 and neither could score against LSU's defense.

Not for lack of effort, but the ground game just never really got working for the Tide.

Grade: B

Receivers

Marquis Maze and Darius Hanks came out strong and looked to take control of the game early. Then, they just kind of disappeared.

Well, that's not fair.

Marquis Maze ended up with six catches, including a couple of pretty big receptions. However, he only racked up 61 yards on those catches and failed to get anywhere near the end zone with the ball in his hands.

Hanks pulled down just two catches for 38 yards.

Arguably, Trent Richardson was the most productive receiver of the day. Richardson pulled in five catches for 80 yards. A couple of his catches were huge as he bulled over defenders after pulling in the football.

They just couldn't quite get on the same page as A.J. McCarron. LSU's defenders were draped all over them most of the game and McCarron couldn't find a hole to stick the football.

There were a couple of dropped passes, but for the most part, the routes were clean and the players went after the ball. They just didn't have many opportunities for success.

All said and told, Alabama had just under 200 yards passing (199), but again, didn't score any points. They couldn't come up with the big plays to back off the LSU defenders up front.

Grade: B-

Offensive Line

The "big uglies" had varying results against LSU's tough defensive line. At times, they pushed their counterparts around and created lanes for Trent Richardson and Eddie Lacy. At others, they allowed defenders to push them around a little and get a little pressure into the backfield.

Hey, it's not easy taking on one of the best defenses in the nation.

In the second half, the Tigers started getting the better of them. Trent Richardson found the sledding awfully difficult and A.J. McCarron took a couple of costly sacks, including a very costly one in overtime. They got beat, plain and simple and struggled to hold off the Tiger attack.

The physicality of the game seemed to take its toll on them as things wore on. They started getting beat up and things got really difficult as the clock ticked down.

I was a little disappointed in the way they started to fold late. When McCarron and Richardson needed them most, they were unable to provide the protection needed to keep the ball moving forward.

Grade: C

Defensive Line

Talk about tenacious. From the very beginning, Bama's D-Line hammered at LSU's offensive line. Pressure didn't come quickly. When it started to get a little of that pressure, the Mad Hatter switched to QB Jordan Jefferson and started running the option offense.

They were rendered a bit less effective as the first half burned to a close, but still didn't allow a lot of big plays to get past them.

As the second half opened up though, they returned with a fury and forced a quick three-and-out with a ton of pressure on Jefferson. Despite another round of switches between Jefferson and Lee, the line didn't get fooled.

If there's anything a little disconcerting, it would be the lack of sacks. While the Tide generated a fair amount of pressure, they were largely unable to get at the quarterbacks quickly enough to bring them down.

They didn't get pushed around. They didn't get pancaked like under-weights. However, they also didn't get enough pressure and struggled to lock off the outside.

LSU came into this game averaging 189 yards per game on the ground. The majority of the responsibility for stopping the run belongs at the line and they allowed the Tigers to put up 148 yards on the ground. They couldn't get a lock on Jefferson, couldn't lock off Ford and couldn't get things hammered out in the backfield enough to get the Tigers off the field quickly and consistently.

Having said all of that, it could have been much worse. This unit didn't give up big runs, made some big hits and didn't get manhandled by a talented LSU offensive line.

Grade: B-

Linebackers

I guess you'd call this group a mixed bag of nuts. On the one hand, they were pretty solid containing the run on the inside and helped put pressure on Jarrett Lee and Jordan Jefferson.

On the other hand, they struggled to get to the sidelines in time to stop Michael Ford before he could get positive yardage. They struggled to get off their blocks and more-or-less forced the runners out of bounds rather than getting pads on them and delivering hits on a number of occasions.

Still, anytime LSU tried to run up the middle, the backers did a fine job of plugging the holes and giving up few yards. They were likewise effective at providing short yardage coverage. They gave up the passes, but ensured they didn't turn into longer gains.

The problem with all of this is that LSU didn't stick to running right up the middle. Ford picked up 72 yards on just 11 carries and most of that came to the outside. Bama's backers are heavy-hitters and very aggressive. They're just not as fast as you'd like to have if you're going to face an option attack with a tricky QB like Jefferson and a speedster like Ford.

They came up with some big stops, particularly on third downs as they were a big part of LSU's only converting 3-of-11 attempts. They just couldn't quite do enough when the game was on the line in overtime.

Still, we can't pin the loss solely on their failure to get to the outside fast enough. They did well against a tricky and tough offense.

Grade: B

Corners/Safeties

This group had Jarrett Lee's number. Midway through the first half, Robert Lester picked him off. Lee was summarily pulled in favor of Jordan Jefferson.

With just under 10 minutes to go in the third quarter, Lee came back into the game and attempted a pass on his first play under center. Yep, another interception.

This time, Mark Barron picked him off.

The secondary gave up one long play of 34 yards, but otherwise forced the Tigers into shorter gains and made them work their way down the field. In fact, the Crimson Tide secondary only allowed LSU to pass for 89 yards.

That's pretty huge, considering the Tigers average just over 183 yards passing per game. No, they're not a fantastic passing team, but any time you hold a team 100 yards below their average in anything, you're doing pretty well.

Giving up the pass wasn't an issue for Alabama tonight. There were issues. This wasn't one of them.

In fact, the secondary was the main reason Les Miles kept Jordan Jefferson on the field so long. Jarrett Lee couldn't find anyone open and Jefferson was able to scramble much better than Lee if he didn't have an open receiver.

In other games, they'd have gotten "coverage sacks," but Jefferson forced them to play two defensive schemes in one.

Grade: A

Kickers

The night started off tough for the Tide. Cade Foster missed his first attempt wide right from 44 yards out. On the second attempt, Alabama had to call time-out because they didn't have enough men on the field. This was all in the first quarter and the entire unit seemed doomed from the start.

Oh yeah, the second one went wide right also, from 50 yards out.

Jeremy Shelley came on late in the first quarter to try a 49-yard shot and had it blocked. He finally hit from 34 yards out in the second quarter to give Alabama the early 3-0 lead.

In the end, it was a horrible overall outing for the kickers. As a team, they made just a third of the kicks they attempted. Yes, a third.

Foster was just 1-for-4 with a miss in overtime that pretty well handed the game to LSU. Shelley was just 1-of-2 with that blocked kick early.

Alabama really needed their kickers. With LSU's defense locking the team out of the red zone and forcing them into tough situations, they had multiple chances to be the heroes of the game. They couldn't come through.

Grade: F

Punters

The punter got to take a nice long break through the first half. Cody Mandell wasn't called on one time until the second half.

That's not necessarily a good thing. Keep in mind that Alabama only scored three points during the entire first half. They moved the ball relatively well, but stalled out drives just inside field goal range and then missed three-out-of-four of them.

When Mandell finally got to shake off the cold and put his foot to the test, he pulled off a 38-yard boot. He'd later add to it with a 42-yard punt, averaging 40 yards-per-punt.

How do you grade this unit though? They didn't do much because they weren't asked to do much.

When called on, Mandell didn't do poorly. For the most part, however, it was a night off.

Grade: B

Kick/Punt Returns

The kick returners didn't have a lot of work to do. LSU only scored nine points all game long.

As a result, the kick returners only had two opportunities to do anything without the incredible hang time a punt tends to generate.

Marquis Maze had a return of 26 yards with a lot of flare added unnecessarily to it and Trent Richardson grabbed one for 23 yards.

The punt return game wasn't much more exciting. For the most part, Brad Wing kept the ball out of position for any kind of meaningful return. He kicked the ball six times, but Alabama really didn't have a chance to do anything with them.

Marquis Maze probably shouldn't be blamed for allowing a punt late in the game to sail over his head and bounce for another 30 yards. He was still trying to walk off an ankle injury.

Still, that failure hurt Bama's chances of getting decent field position and they found themselves trying to dig out of a position hole once again.

It's tough to pin any of this on the players themselves, but as for an overall outlook of the special teams, it was an all-out failure for the Tide.

Grade: C (I gave them extra credit for not having a chance)

Coaching

Nick Saban is one of the best in the game. Make no mistake about that. You don't get to the position he's in when you're stupid.

Having said that, I question the call to bring Jeremy Shelley in on a 49-yard field goal in the first half when his long on the season is just 37 yards. I get that Cade Foster had missed the first two attempts, but if you're not absolutely comfortable the other guy can hit that distance, then punt the ball.

Their defense was doing well. Pin the Tigers deep and let the defense hold them there.

I would also strongly question the decision to put Marquis Maze back in as a punt returner midway through the fourth quarter when they had LSU punting from their own end zone. Maze had just injured his ankle a short while before that and was unable to back-pedal to get to the ball.

He allowed it to go over his head and LSU ended up with a 70-plus yard punt out of the deal. It shouldn't have gone more than 40, as a healthy Maze (or any other punt returner) would have gotten to the ball and at least called fair catch.

Saban was looking for a big play with a guy physically incapable of making that play at that time.

Along with all of that, what was that play with Marquis Maze throwing the ball in the fourth quarter? Why did Alabama need to resort to "trick plays" to try for a touchdown? The run game was working again by that point and McCarron had really done pretty well all game.

The team was nearly in good enough range that neither of their troubled kickers could miss and they were pushing LSU backwards. Why mess with what's working?

It's easy to sit in my recliner and critique Nick Saban. I get that, and I'm not trying to pretend that I'm smarter than he is. However, I really thought that Saban was out-coached in this game by Les Miles and that's frustrating to me. Typically, Saban is the much better coach in my mind.

Grade: C-

Intangibles and Turnovers

Turnovers became the name of the game as the clock ticked away the minutes. Both defenses had been stout and neither showed signs of giving up anything terribly significant.

A pair of interceptions had given Alabama a slight edge earlier in the game, but another pair of interceptions handed it right back. One of them was at the goal line, thwarting a Tide touchdown.

Penalties weren't really a problem from the quantity standpoint, but they were costly in their timing. A call of too many men in the huddle in overtime pushed them back and forced them to operate from 15 yards instead of 10. You can't beat teams like LSU while making mental errors.

This team was at home. They shouldn't have had communication problems. The crowd should know better and the team should have known their own field enough to have made appropriate adjustments for noise level. How do those communication breakdowns happen?

The little things cost this team dearly. It wouldn't be that tough an argument to say they cost the team the game.