From the realm of ugly wins that beat pretty losses, Alabama – in slim fashion – managed to maintain its title hopes despite almost handing a game to an inferior opponent on Homecoming. The solar eclipse that passed over the land ultimately obscured about half the usual sunlight raining down over Bryant-Denny Stadium – fitting, because Alabama only gave about half effort.
It could be posited that Alabama was due a game like this following three games that showed steady improvement against tough opponents. And when the Tide raced out to a 21-6 lead in the first half, then extended it to 24-6 in the early third quarter, the ensuing Saturday afternoon nap that Bama decided to take was as foretold as the hangover that follows a spring break trip to a Gatlinburg whiskey distillery.
It wasn’t the fact Arkansas got back into the game that caused the most concern; what was disturbing was how Alabama lost its collective composure midway through the third quarter and didn’t really get it back until Justin Eboigbe and Dallas Turner sacked K.J. Jefferson to end Arkansas’ final drive with 5:19 left on the fourth-quarter clock.
Credit Jalen Milroe and the Bama running game with landing the plane at that point, because the Tide offense converted two third downs and picked up three total first downs in its final drive, which allowed it to finish the game in victory formation – but not before Alabama inexplicably lost its composure on a kneel-down play.
Such is Alabama football in 2023. It is equal parts “wow” moments and frustration. It is watching Milroe miss a wide-open Isaiah Bond by 20 feet, and have Bond also drop a good pass right in his mitts, yet then it’s also about Milroe threading a needle to Amari Niblack on the final drive or watching the defense come up with a huge stop and force a punt with the game still separated by just three points.
Arkansas’ Sam Pittman must feel like the proverbially snake-bit man. His Razorback team is now the owner of five straight losses, and four of those have been by a single score. Arkansas played hard for 60 minutes – something Alabama did not do – and fundamentally, Pittman’s staff appears to get more out of the talent on hand than most staffs do, but school brass isn’t going to put up with many five-loss seasons, to say nothing of five losses in a row, no matter the margin nor the circumstances.
Alabama now gets a Tennessee that played well on defense in a win over Texas A&M, but still has many issues of its own. The Volunteers are clearly improving as the season has gone on, however, and will be looking to prove that last year’s win wasn’t a one-off after more than a decade of getting run out of the stadium consistently by Nick Saban and his teams. Ask us whether we thought much of Tennessee’s chances after watching Bama’s wins over Mississippi State and Texas A&M and we probably would have laughed it off. Well, no one is laughing now.
Nick Saban has to be hoping that this week’s dip is just that, a single event, and not a harbinger of larger, recurring problems. Alabama spent about half of Saturday going forward and the other half regressing. For a team chasing a championship, however slim those chances might be, it can’t put up another effort like this in 2023.
Here’s the Five-Point Breakdown for Alabama-Arkansas:
1. Offensive line is getting better inside, but LT is broken and in need of a fix. Prior to the season, Alabama thought it could get through the year leaving J.C. Latham at right tackle and using a true freshman, Kadyn Proctor, as its left tackle. A redshirt freshman, Elijah Pritchett, had shown enough promise to also get looks at left tackle. Once the season started, though, those plans look to have been ill-formed. Alabama yielded 5 sacks to Arkansas and a QB hurry, not all that surprising given Arkansas’ history up to this point in 2023, but disappointing from the standpoint that there are better teams left on the schedule. Most of the pressure QB Jalen Milroe had to face came from the blindside, and the running game was also affected to a degree (although RB performance was standout – see item No. 3). Alabama has talked about giving Proctor and Pritchett help from a tight end, but it didn’t seem to work well today. Several players need to do better here, obviously Proctor and Pritchett, but also tight ends C.J. Dippre (who appeared to injure a foot or an ankle late in this game) and Robbie Ouzts. On a bright note, RG Jaeden Roberts played another solid game today and it’s going to be hard to justify going back to Darrian Dalcourt at that spot when Dalcourt’s shoulder returns to full health. There aren’t any other options at tackle, other than perhaps moving Latham over to the left side and starting Proctor, Pritchett or another true freshman, Miles McVay, at right tackle. The solution, if there is one, is to simply have the left tackles get better. We’ve seen development from some of the linemen this fall, but not really from Proctor, and we haven’t seen enough yet of Pritchett to make a call.
2. Milroe lost focus in the second half, didn’t feel pressure well and had an uneven day – but performed well at the end. This was probably Milroe’s worst game overall outside of the Texas loss; he completed less than half his pass attempts and on a couple of occasions, made a bad situation worse when responding to the edge rush. Young quarterbacks are always in a precarious position when their tackles are struggling, because without the benefit of experience or trust, they will eventually begin to focus on the pass rush rather than just doing their job. It didn’t help that Bama dropped some potential catches – more on that later, too – but Milroe played like a freshman that hadn’t seen the field from about the midway point of the third quarter up to the final drive. When Bama had to have it, though, he showed up big with a key third-down scramble and a miraculous completion to TE Amari Niblack in between three or four defenders. It is what it is at this point, but Milroe needs to take this game and learn from it.
3. Bama got some burst from mixing up the RB rotation; Arkansas may have given the game away with its take on the same. Jamarion Miller and Justice Haynes both got carries with the game still on the line Saturday, and both responded. Miller averaged 10.0 yards per carry, 40 yards on 4 totes, while Haynes had two good runs for a net 11 yards. It wasn’t as if Jase McClellan or Roydell Williams had bad days, either. Williams had his best day statistically since South Florida, rolling up 68 yards on 7 carries (9.7 avg.) and never getting tackled for a loss. McClellan got 83 tough yards on 16 carries (5.2 avg.) and made a nice adjustment on a poorly-thrown outlet pass that he eventually turned into a 5-yard gain late. Miller in particular appeared to give Bama a burst, and his stutter-step move in the hole on a carry in the third quarter was the best run of the day from any Bama back. Basically, Miller treats every rushing attempt as if he was late for a connecting flight. Arkansas, though, was an enigma. We profiled that the Razorbacks had only one back out of four producing up to standard this year, A.J. Green. Green netted 44 yards on 6 carries (7.3 avg.), was aggressive in his attempts, and Alabama had no real answer for him when he was in. Yet Arkansas chose to run Rashod Dubinion 14 times, and Dubinion came away with just 26 yards, a paltry 1.9 yards per carry, which is not much less than his per-carry season average coming into this game. K.J. Jefferson was largely shut down as a runner with the exception of a miracle sack escape and scramble off a corner blitz from Terrion Arnold. Dominique Johnson got 2 carries and did nothing on either. Running back rotations are a good idea, but someone needs to show Sam Pittman a stat sheet. If Green had gotten more chances, this might have been a different game.
4. Credit the interior DL, especially Tim Keenan and Justin Eboigbe, and the OLB group for controlling the game flow. If you had Quandarrius Robinson leading the OLB group in tackles today (6) and sacks (1), go to the window and collect your payday. Dallas Turner and Chris Braswell also played well and Turner’s sack on third down on Arkansas’ last drive could not have come at a bigger time. The defensive line didn’t get the same kind of results they put up last week in College Station, but Justin Eboigbe in particular was a handful (5 tackles, 0.5 TFL, 0.5 sacks, 1 QB hurry, 1 PBU) and Tim Keenan (4 tackles, 1 QB hurry) continues to develop into one of the conference’s best pure nosetackles. Despite the success of A.J. Green at tailback for Arkansas, not much else worked consistently, and Alabama forced several early punts by stifling the running game at just the right moments on just the right parts of the field. This will certainly be a key development to watch heading into the Tennessee game, but it’s going to be the LSU game where this all comes to a head. It’s been great watching Eboigbe finish his career in strong fashion after having so much of it robbed by various injuries.
5. WR drops were an issue for the first time, and Bama needs TE group to step up. Isaiah Bond and Malik Benson both had drops in critical situations, and overall the WR group just didn’t play with the sharpness it had shown in games prior. It was good to see Ja’Corey Brooks get back on the board again, snagging a nice 25-yard pass on an out route, which was probably Jalen Milroe’s best pass of the day. While the WR group just needs to clean things up heading into Tennessee, the tight end group as a whole needs to take another step forward in their development. Amari Niblack had a great game, but C.J. Dippre and Robbie Ouzts have basically disappeared from the offense and need to block better when protecting Milroe as well as do a better job finding seams. When Dippre went out, Danny Lewis Jr. replaced him but the rust showed; he hadn’t played extensively since the beginning of the year. We’re also going to reserve a special get-better comment for WR Jermaine Burton to close this analysis out: Stop acting like Marshall Henderson and play football. The incessant jawing has become both distracting and is unbecoming of an Alabama player. It very well may have been the trigger for the unforgivable procedure penalty on a victory formation play at the end of the game. Burton seems to use his mouth a lot to frustrate and set up defenders, but there’s a limit to what’s acceptable and he always seems to be treading a knife’s edge. If it winds up costing Alabama at a crucial moment down the road, he’ll never be allowed to forget it.
Follow Jess Nicholas on X at @TideFansJessN