Wouldn’t you have assumed that Bama would do exactly what they did in last nights game ahead of time? You knew KB would be challenged downfield. You had to know they would load up against run, especially qb run. Renfrow would be blanketed especially on 3rd down. My question is why would it take you a full half of football to figure that out? Everyone knew this going in.
We should have been living on the downfield throws early when they were there instead of running it for -2 twenty times in the 1st half.
I just don’t get why any of that surprised us. In that type of game you should have passed to set up the run.
That first drive or 2 in the 3Q should have been how we started from the jump.
The short of it is that Bryant didn't have time to throw down field in either half. Our O-Line got demolished once Bama found out Kelly would hesitate to throw into coverage. I'm not saying he was wrong for that, but the short throw success we had in the second half was clearly not how we wanted to start the game. It looks to me like Tee going down really hurt our game plan. Now we can debate why coaches would rely heavily on one player, but you do have to play to your strengths to win championship games. Just my two...