{"id":69736,"date":"2024-12-05T13:00:12","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T18:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=69736"},"modified":"2025-09-13T16:20:28","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T20:20:28","slug":"alabamas-irregular-regular-season-ends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2024\/12\/05\/alabamas-irregular-regular-season-ends\/","title":{"rendered":"Alabama\u2019s Irregular Regular Season Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alabama\u2019s regular season ended last week with a decisive victory over rival Auburn.<\/a> They won\u2019t play on championship week while they wait to find out if the CFP committee deems them worthy of advancing to the college football playoff. This year the field has expanded to 12. The AP poll has Alabama ranked 11th, but they might still be on the outside looking in depending on who wins the conference championships. Most years Bama wouldn\u2019t have to sweat because they usually finish top four. But in Kalen DeBoer\u2019s first season, after taking over for the legendary Nick Saban, they only finished 9-3. It\u2019s Bama\u2019s first three-loss season since 2010 which has many asking what went wrong.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Big Enough Wins?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Alabama\u2019s three losses this season came on the road against Vanderbilt, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. The Volunteers are the only ranked team of those three. However, the more interesting question, especially for the selection committee, might revolve around who they did beat. They beat fourth-ranked Georgia where they dominated for a half and then almost blew it. They squeaked out a win against South Carolina who was unranked at the time. After that loss, the Gamecocks went on a six-game win streak and now rank 13th. Missouri is ranked 23rd and has been a decent team all season. But Alabama played against a clearly hobbled Brady Cook for a half and his backup who threw three terrible interceptions. Does the committee consider how injured the opponent is?<\/span><\/p>\n

Saban\u2019s Ghost<\/strong><\/h3>\n

If they don’t make the playoffs, the season is a failure. People will wonder if losing Saban is to blame. Saban\u2019s 2023 team did have two losses. But one was in the semifinals and he went undefeated in the conference. In 17 years, Saban won six National Championships and only had one three-loss season in 2010. That\u2019s impossible to live up to. But DeBoer\u2019s 2024 team actually scored more and gave us fewer points per game than Saban\u2019s team last year. The big knock against DeBoer is that in the two losses to unranked teams, they got out-coached. Vanderbilt and Oklahoma had offensive game plans that were better and the staff had no answer for it. DeBoer seems like a good coach but he might have only so many more seasons to prove himself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Milroe Madness<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Jalen Milroe<\/a> had a weird season. At moments, he looked like one of the best players in the country. In other weeks, he almost single-handedly cost Alabama games. In Bama\u2019s three losses, Milroe had seven turnovers. And in those games, he carried the ball 36 total times for only 28 yards. The importance of his rushing was even more on display in Bama\u2019s two biggest wins of the year. Those were Milroe\u2019s two best rushing games with 117 yards against Georgia and 185 yards against LSU.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Milroe is a good passer, though it didn\u2019t decide games the way his running did. His completion percentage was only 0.1 percent higher than 2023. He passed for eight less touchdowns, though he made up for that by rushing for eight more. He only threw six interceptions last year and that ballooned to 10 in 2024. Milroe was the most important player on the offense and it ebbed and flowed with his performance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Other Offenses<\/strong><\/h3>\n

One obvious problem with Alabama’s season was that everything relied on Milroe. The rest of the rushing attack was good, but not great. Jam Miller<\/a> and Justice Haynes<\/a> combined for 1,089 yards and 15 total touchdowns, but neither ever took over a game. There were games where they couldn\u2019t get anything going and, even in the good games, they were never dominant. Some of that falls on the offensive line, but they could never pick up the slack whenever the team really needed it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Freshman Ryan Williams<\/a> is already one of the best receivers in the country. He\u2019s absolutely electric and will be a high-draft pick when he leaves. But at times, he was also inconsistent. He had games where he would make incredible plays and others where he would disappear for stretches. That\u2019s not uncommon for a freshman and it\u2019s only disappointing because he set the bar so high. Besides Williams, there just weren\u2019t a lot of other reliable weapons. Germie Bernard<\/a> is a nice possession receiver who made some big catches and got better as the year went on. But besides those two, they didn\u2019t have another player with 250 receiving yards.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Defending the Defense<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The defense was under a lot of scrutiny throughout the year. Early on, it was their inability to get off the field on third down. They mostly fixed that problem, but the defense still had games where they got run all over. In the three losses, they gave up an average of 49 carries for 212 rushing yards and six total touchdowns. But in their defense, during the Vanderbilt game, they only allowed 3.1 yards per carry. Against Tennessee, they only gave up 24 points to a team that scores 37 a game. In the Oklahoma game, they gave up 205 of the 257 rushing yards in the first half and still only trailed 10-3. Even in poor performances, they never let it get out of hand. They ranked 11th in the country in points per game. Their 16 interceptions were top-10 plus they forced and recovered 12 fumbles. This defense was not perfect, but also not the problem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Big Two<\/strong><\/h3>\n

If they don\u2019t make the playoffs, it will be for a myriad of reasons. But the two biggest issues for Alabama all season, which have been discussed ad-nauseam, were the turnovers and penalties. Ranking near the bottom of the country in penalties shows a lack of discipline which falls on the coach. Alabama did eventually clean up the issues, but it was too little too late. I do think DeBoer is a good coach. He\u2019s succeeded at every place he\u2019s previously worked. Replacing arguably the greatest college football coach ever was an impossible task. DeBoer has taken his lumps and he should learn from them. It was only his first season, but if they miss the playoffs his leash will be a bit shorter.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo Credit: Will McLelland-Imagn Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alabama\u2019s regular season ended last week with a decisive victory over rival Auburn. They won\u2019t play on championship week while they wait to find out if the CFP committee deems them worthy of advancing to the college football playoff. This year the field has expanded to 12. The AP poll has Alabama ranked 11th, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5300,"featured_media":69755,"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":[3,35574,2,35581,35587,35580],"tags":[35,79,8115,41,37,59,96],"class_list":["post-69736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sec","category-alabama-crimson-tide","category-featured","category-oklahoma-sooners","category-tennessee-volunteers","category-vanderbilt-commodores","tag-alabama-crimson-tide","tag-college-football","tag-kalen-deboer","tag-nick-saban","tag-oklahoma-sooners","tag-tennessee-volunteers","tag-vanderbilt-commodores"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69736","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=69736"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69756,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69736\/revisions\/69756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}