Chris Childers and Rick Neuheisel took their Sirius radio talkshow to Alabama today for their latest stop on the national camp tour.
Two takeaways:
1. Two different players, when they were asked what went wrong in the OSU game, said they took the Buckeyes lightly, took the win for granted.
That's hard to believe, in the Final Four. But I believe it. It can happen. And, believe it or not, this was part of MSU's problem vs OSU too. I usually don't buy that as an excuse, but MSU took OSU as their "b----" after beating OSU the year before, and then seeing OSU lose two of its next three (vs Clemson and Va Tech), and then MSU has OSU coming to Spartan Stadium, and MSU had just choke-slammed Michigan, and MSU had a bye week. It was a perfect storm of pride coming before that particular fall.
OSU was the better team and was likely going to win regardless of the circumstances. But MSU helped it along by becoming fat and sassy for the one and only time thus far in the Dantonio era.
2. Saban was asked about things they want to work on this year. He said last year, I'm paraphrasing, they spent too much time and invested too much of their game plan in dink-and-dunk smoke screens and bubble screens and what Saban called "loose plays." Saban said Bama did a good job in some of those areas, and it probably served their style of QB best last year. But he said when it came time to pound, as he put it, and run block, and get tough yards, they weren't as good at it "because we kind of robbed Peter to pay Paul."
("Rob Peter to pay Paul was an old Norm Parker term from the Perles era at MSU back in the '90s. Interesting that Saban is still using that term, firstly. Secondly, Saban means that his offense became better and dinking it and dunking it around, but according to Saban, he feels it took away - somehow - from their ability to be physical on the ground. I'm not exactly sure how spending a lot of time with screen and perimeter passing offense can take away from your ability to be physical downhill, but I'm not going to argue with him about it. I've heard defensive coaches say that facing finesse offenses every day in practice tends to make their defenses soft. But I've never heard it quite this particular way, with finesse passing hurting one's ability to pound it between the tackles. )
So anyway, Bama intends to improve its ability to ground and pound this year. Sounds like they are trending away from the Malzahn/Baylor/Oregon trends and backing up the truck the other way.
Two takeaways:
1. Two different players, when they were asked what went wrong in the OSU game, said they took the Buckeyes lightly, took the win for granted.
That's hard to believe, in the Final Four. But I believe it. It can happen. And, believe it or not, this was part of MSU's problem vs OSU too. I usually don't buy that as an excuse, but MSU took OSU as their "b----" after beating OSU the year before, and then seeing OSU lose two of its next three (vs Clemson and Va Tech), and then MSU has OSU coming to Spartan Stadium, and MSU had just choke-slammed Michigan, and MSU had a bye week. It was a perfect storm of pride coming before that particular fall.
OSU was the better team and was likely going to win regardless of the circumstances. But MSU helped it along by becoming fat and sassy for the one and only time thus far in the Dantonio era.
2. Saban was asked about things they want to work on this year. He said last year, I'm paraphrasing, they spent too much time and invested too much of their game plan in dink-and-dunk smoke screens and bubble screens and what Saban called "loose plays." Saban said Bama did a good job in some of those areas, and it probably served their style of QB best last year. But he said when it came time to pound, as he put it, and run block, and get tough yards, they weren't as good at it "because we kind of robbed Peter to pay Paul."
("Rob Peter to pay Paul was an old Norm Parker term from the Perles era at MSU back in the '90s. Interesting that Saban is still using that term, firstly. Secondly, Saban means that his offense became better and dinking it and dunking it around, but according to Saban, he feels it took away - somehow - from their ability to be physical on the ground. I'm not exactly sure how spending a lot of time with screen and perimeter passing offense can take away from your ability to be physical downhill, but I'm not going to argue with him about it. I've heard defensive coaches say that facing finesse offenses every day in practice tends to make their defenses soft. But I've never heard it quite this particular way, with finesse passing hurting one's ability to pound it between the tackles. )
So anyway, Bama intends to improve its ability to ground and pound this year. Sounds like they are trending away from the Malzahn/Baylor/Oregon trends and backing up the truck the other way.
