{"id":66000,"date":"2024-10-10T11:00:06","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=66000"},"modified":"2025-09-13T16:20:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T20:20:33","slug":"alabama-looks-to-rebound-against-south-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2024\/10\/10\/alabama-looks-to-rebound-against-south-carolina\/","title":{"rendered":"Alabama Looks to Rebound Against South Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alabama will look to rebound from their huge upset loss to Vanderbilt last week<\/a> against South Carolina. It helps that they get to head home to Tuscaloosa. The Gamecocks are coming off their own loss, getting drubbed by Ole Miss last weekend 27-3<\/a>. The Crimson Tide were riding high after their big win over Georgia two weeks ago. But this loss highlighted some issues that need to be fixed. This week could be a good opportunity to get things back on track. But if that doesn\u2019t happen, things could get dicey very quickly for Kalen DeBoer\u2019s team.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alabama Looks to Rebound Against South Carolina<\/h2>\n

Offense Could Be Better<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The offense has been very good. Even though they lost last weekend and the offense made mistakes, they still scored 35 points. It\u2019s crazy to think they could be better when they are averaging 44.6 points per game, eighth best in the country, but they could. Jalen Milroe<\/a> is one of the best all-around players. He did make two mistakes forcing a throw that led to a pick-six and didn\u2019t see a blindside sack that caused a fumble. He still threw for 310 yards and accounted for two touchdowns. Maybe they\u2019re relying on him too much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He leads the team in rushing attempts through five games. He struggled running on Saturday and could only muster 10 yards on seven carries. The team combined for 84 yards rushing yards. They need to get the other running backs more involved. Jam Miller<\/a> averaged nine yards per carry on Saturday, but only got five carries, and is averaging 8.2 for the season. Establishing the run more will take some of the pressure off of Milroe. When you have a receiver as good as Ryan Williams<\/a>, it\u2019s tempting to throw as much as possible. Justice Haynes<\/a>, their other running back, has averaged 7.2 yards per carry this season. Using Miller and Haynes more could open up the offense.<\/span><\/p>\n

Relying on the passing game so much has started a potentially problematic trend for the offense. They are not sustaining long drives. Vanderbilt had scoring drives that lasted over six minutes and almost 10 minutes last week. Alabama had one that lasted 3:41 and the rest were all under three minutes. In the last two games, they haven\u2019t had a drive over five minutes. They are scoring points but they\u2019re relying on mostly big plays which doesn’t leave much margin for error. That\u2019s why Vanderbilt possessed the ball almost two-and-a-half times the amount Bama did and allowed them to control the game.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Defensive Struggles<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When you lose time of possession by that wide of a margin, it means your defense is spending a lot of time on the field. And they have not played like a typical Alabama defense. They got dominated by Vanderbilt last week. They allowed 418 yards and gave up 33 points, with the other seven points coming on the pick-six. Over their last six quarters, including the second half against Georgia, they\u2019ve given up 60 points.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019re not bereft of talent and they were excellent through the first three games, albeit against lesser competition. And the issues do seem bigger than just being tired from being on the field too much. DeBoer had his own take during his press conference and it was to not overreact.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst thing you can do is panic. We have a defense that has had a lot of success here through five games. And there\u2019s just little bits and pieces of what we gotta do. Really in the second half, I thought we did a much better job on first down and second down. The game was a first-down game in the first half. They put themselves in better situations. The second half we just had to do a better job getting off the field on third down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Not a lot of concerns or answers in that statement. He clearly thinks the answers lie more in execution than any big changes which is fair. It is hasty to get desperate and try to do too much. The defense could have just had two bad games and starting the game down 14-0 didn\u2019t do them any favors. Another performance like last week\u2019s though and the coach will have to provide better answers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similar Opponent<\/strong><\/h3>\n

South Carolina is no slouch and is not to be taken lightly. They\u2019re 3-2 and they were receiving top 25 votes before their loss last week. Their quarterback, LaNorris Sellers<\/a>, had missed games due to injury and last week was his first one back. Clearly, he had some rust to kick off with their offense only scoring three points. But he\u2019s another dual-threat quarterback who is dangerous in the run game. As a team, they rush for 184 yards per game. Bama got beat last week because Vanderbilt was able to shrink the game and limit overall possessions. The Gamecocks will most likely come in with a similar game plan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Road Ahead<\/strong><\/h3>\n

This is the Crimson Tide\u2019s easiest game over the next month. After this week, they play Tennessee, Missouri, and LSU, all of which are ranked teams. The defense is in desperate need of a rebound performance. And the offense needs to help them by putting together drives that last more than three minutes so the defense isn\u2019t on the field constantly. It\u2019s hard to win every game even for a team as talented as Alabama. But a loss this week would have everyone pressing the panic button. And in his first season. DeBoer really can\u2019t afford that.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo Credit: Denny Simmons The Tennessean<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alabama will look to rebound from their huge upset loss to Vanderbilt last week against South Carolina. It helps that they get to head home to Tuscaloosa. The Gamecocks are coming off their own loss, getting drubbed by Ole Miss last weekend 27-3. The Crimson Tide were riding high after their big win over Georgia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5300,"featured_media":66020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,35574,2,35582,35577,35580],"tags":[35,79,8115,258,20,80,96],"class_list":["post-66000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sec","category-alabama-crimson-tide","category-featured","category-ole-miss-rebels","category-south-carolina-gamecocks","category-vanderbilt-commodores","tag-alabama-crimson-tide","tag-college-football","tag-kalen-deboer","tag-ole-miss-rebels","tag-sec","tag-south-carolina-gamecocks","tag-vanderbilt-commodores"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77916,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66000\/revisions\/77916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}