Alabama Crimson Tide vs. MTSU

Saturday, September 2

The Good

My goodness, it felt outstanding to not see a ton of mental errors, busts, and penalties galore. Yes, I know it was MTSU, but this felt like the most complete game from a Bama team in years outside of K State last year.

Photo via Alabama Athletics

Quarterback: Jalen Milroe

I’ve had my doubts and still worry about accuracy a bit and staring down his receivers against legit comp, but I think he did everything you would have liked to see last night and did it well. Had a couple throws that were off but so did BY last year. His pocket presence has improved but still a little worried about him hanging on to the ball.

If we see more of what we saw last night against Texas, count me in! He had two DIMES to Bond and Niblack no doubt about it. Still want to see some success in the intermediate game and get the ball to Bond, Law, etc in space.

Defense did a nice job tackling, and it looked like we knew where to go and what we were wanting to do all night. Not sure we ever saw inside linebacker play like that under Golding and count me in on seeing Q Rob more at inside backer with Lawson on the stunts. Those two guys look like Rashaan Evans when chasing the ball.

Wide Receivers + Tight Ends

LOADED. Like Coach said last night though want to see it against better comp though. Folks on this board need to quickly start putting some respect on Burton’s name!

The Bad

This is a little nit-picky on all of these, but here are my concerns. Could be actual concerns but maybe not. Run defense concerns me a bit. I saw some big holes, and we got gashed a couple times.

Tim Smith is just flat out disappointing to me at this point. He got put on skates on at least 3 occasions last night that I saw. We held MTSU to 3 yards per carry, and I will take that all night long. But again where does that number go against legit competition?

Secondary looks legit, but man, we are thin.

Run Game and O line.

This is our bread and butter this year, and we’ve got to be dominant as the entire offense works through this. I don’t think we played bad upfront, but I expected to see a little more push and domination.

Maybe Cole Cubelic got in my head, and I was a little over confident. It also takes a few games for these guys to really gel and get going, and I still think the potential is there.

Pass Protection

Little shaky and I dont like it with Milroe back there so unexperienced and a little loose with it.

Overall, I think this was about as good as you could have asked for with a lot of new faces starting at key positions. I still think the season hinges on us being able to dominate the line of scrimmage.

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