What we have learned....

The happy time at Alabama is over. It was fun while it lasted, but it had to end. Yesterday, it ended in one of the poorest performances I've seen from a Saban-coached team. South Carolina played an almost perfect game, and it's necessary to give credit where credit's due. For Alabama, there were a multitude of missed tackles, a 17-yard punt deep in Alabama territory, two 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalties, a missed extra point, a missed chip shot field goal, an inability to stop South Carolina on three separate third-down and long situations in the fourth quarter, a dropped pass on third down, and only 1 sack. In one game, Alabama has become just another irrelevant team in the SEC west struggling to beat the division leaders. In preparation for what I think will become a 2-3 loss finish to 2010, it's important to identify what we've learned from yesterday's performance.

Alabama's defense is not even close to previous Saban units. It doesn't matter how many stars you place next to a player's name on Rivals or Scout, it does not equate into defensive success. There is no substitute for experience. South Carolina has 16 seniors on their team. Alabama's defense is currently leaderless, cannot cover, cannot tackle, cannot provide the slightest bit of pressure, and is eerily reminiscent of Coach Kines' "bend but don't break" units of the Shula era. Alabama had third and 10, 12, and 9, and failed to stop any of them in the fourth quarter. Alabama had only one sack the entire game, and South Carolina had more sacks in this game (8) than Alabama has had all year. There was no evidence of any defensive adjustments at halftime, and it showed. While Alabama benefited from South Carolina's mistakes (the boneheaded safety and the improbable interception), neither can be attributed to defensive play. This defensive unit is going to struggle against LSU and Auburn, and will likely limp into some mediocre mid-tier bowl in December.

You can have Ingram and Richardson in the same backfield and still have a bad offense. Alabama hoped to employ the same, worn-out plays to beat a team that had prepared specifically for two weeks to counter them. A year later, Alabama runs wildcats and throws screens and dump-off passes, thinking South Carolina hasn't learned their lesson, or is incapable of stopping them. Not only did South Carolina stop them, Alabama had a hard time running them. A single South Carolina RB had more yards than Ingram and Richardson combined. McElroy was sacked eight times and lost over 50 yards. While Marquis Maze appeared to have the hot hand, they rarely threw to him. There was no evidence of any offensive adjustments at halftime, not that any would have helped given the fact that Alabama played catch-up all day with little or no chance to overcoming any deficit on offense alone.

McElroy is incapable of doing anything he's not told to do. McElroy's main strength is running plays from a playbook with few turnovers. He never takes risks, he never throws down field if a dump-off receiver is open, and is incapable of taking the game on his shoulders. He would never make the throws Garcia did to Jeffery because he would never risk it. He holds onto the ball for 8, 10, 12 seconds, looking for a receiver, negating good pass blocking by the OL when he's eventually sacked. He never throws the ball away, for the reasons above, which usually results in sacks and losses of five or more yards, and is then incapable of getting the additional 10-12 yards necessary on subsequent downs.

The success of this Alabama team depends on its response to this adversity. It could respond with another run of victories, but I don't think it will. I think this particular team has reached its peak, and will nosedive into mediocrity in the next two months. Five more teams have bye weeks before Alabama to prepare the way South Carolina did (although most aren't coached by Spurrier). I think they will struggle against Tennessee and Ole Miss, will have another catastrophic loss to the likes of Miss St, and will lose to both LSU and Auburn. Ingram, Jones, and others will leave early for the NFL, and the "process" starts all over again in 2011 with an entirely new group of players. What we've learned is that success doesn't last, and that one single loss exposes a team and relegates it to the long list of irrelevant teams struggling to be relevant.

As a post script comment, I'd like to add that scheduling personnel responsible for this six bye week farce, if they are still around, need to be fired.