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If games were songs, this one was Little Texas’ 1993 hit “What Might Have Been.”
While Alabama held a 7-0 lead at the half of this game, there was an uneasy feeling that permeated the Bama universe at that point, as Tennessee had managed to turn the ball over three times in the half and Alabama had failed to capitalize on any of them. In the second half, Tennessee cleaned up its ball-security issues, converted its opportunities, while Alabama’s offense was powerless to answer.
There are many times in the game of football where it feels like the best team didn’t win, or an official’s mistake cost someone in a close moment; this was not one of those times. The team that played the best won this one, and it wasn’t particularly up for debate given the number of mistakes Alabama made and the number of times the Crimson Tide misfired when it had the desired result right in front of them.
Still, Alabama found a way against Georgia to come back late and then stop the Bulldogs in the last minute to seal the win. It did it again last week against an improving South Carolina team that absolutely plowed Oklahoma under the turf today. It could have done the same to Tennessee, if it had found a way to get out of its own way.
Ken Williamson’s officiating crew is known for calling games tight. Alabama and Tennessee both were only too eager to oblige. A total of 26 penalties were called in this game and until the very last one – a flag on Alabama’s Kendrick Law for retaliating physically to a verbal insult – the yardage assessed to both teams was almost exactly even. Fans might object to the strictness of this crew, but fans also yell and complain when officials let too much go through in the name of “letting the players play.” The refs can’t win.
Unfortunately, neither could Alabama, because while this team is continuing to find its way under a new regime and with new offensive and defensive styles of play, the devil has been in the details. And today, the devil cashed in.
Alabama’s defense should be lauded for the first half it put up, a shutout for a unit that for two weeks has been dragged through the mud in the media and on message boards for failing to play to Alabama standards. But it turned the rope loose in the second half, especially against the run, and couldn’t force errors from the Tennessee offense when they were badly needed.
As Missouri comes to town next week – probably not as good a Missouri team as people thought a month ago, but still more than good enough to upset Alabama in Bryant-Denny Stadium – there will be questions as to what the long-term health of the program looks like. Alabama must now win out and hope for a handful of losses from specific teams in order to make the playoffs. Most likely, this won’t be the last loss of the regular season, and the next one absolutely drops the hammer on the Tide’s playoff chances.
So what does the new staff do then? Anyone hired to replace Nick Saban knew they were getting into a sort of pseudo-rebuild even if the prior year’s record and talent on hand didn’t immediately point to it. It might be time to start laying the groundwork for 2025, trying new things, different players or groupings, going back to being hell-bent-for-leather aggressive on offense, and most importantly, getting back to accountability for repeated mistakes. We’ll talk about that more in the our breakdown below.
Not everything has to go right for Alabama to win in 2024. Everything didn’t go right today for Tennessee. But Alabama has been far too self-destructive, not just this season but over parts of the last three seasons, to be considered one of the nation’s elite teams. It’s time to refocus on what got everybody here to begin with, not on the rewards for being here at the moment.
Here’s the Five-Point Breakdown for Alabama-Tennessee:
1. Top matchup issue by far was Bama OL against the UT DL. And Tennessee crushed it. If you have access to tape, go back and look at the number of times Tennessee’s defensive ends set an edge within a second of the snap. It was uncanny the amount of upfield progress Tennessee’s ends were getting against Bama’s offensive tackles, and the result was that it removed from the Bama playbook any kind of sweep action that Kalen DeBoer intended to use.
This affected the running backs greatly, but it also took out most of the designed runs for Jalen Milroe out of the QB position. It also allowed Tennessee to fire the inside linebackers into the box without having to worry about supportive containment outside the ends. So even if Alabama’s interior OL won the day off the snap, Bama’s backs were being forced back into the wash because they couldn’t get outside the tackles. RT Elijah Pritchett in particular had issues on his side.
Alabama ran the ball 34 times for only 75 yards on the day. For a team that needs a power running game to open up its passing attack, this wasn’t getting the job done. Milroe’s ability to scramble was also limited, and any time he feels limited he seems to default to running to the right whether it’s the correct idea or not. Milroe let the constant pressure affect his footwork, with several poor throws, especially a critical overthrow in Ryan Williams’ direction late in the game. Alabama won’t have to face another DL like Tennessee’s but both Missouri and Oklahoma can be rowdy up front and Auburn isn’t bad, either.
Teams are starting to figure out that if they can stop the Bama run, it can unwind the entire offensive mechanism. And Tennessee did it mostly with just four or five guys.
2. Penalties, turnovers probably cost Alabama the game otherwise, and it’s time for accountability. Jalen Milroe’s two interceptions were both terrible throws that never should have left his hand. The interception in the end zone went against Tennessee’s best cornerback, who had a size advantage over Ryan Williams, while Caleb Odom was on the other side against a smaller DB. If it was a forced playcall from the sideline, it was the wrong call. Alabama went back to it later for a touchdown but Williams was working against a different DB. The larger problem here is the number of mistakes and how the continued commission of those errors seems to be happening without a lot of consequences. Kendrick Law’s penalty probably didn’t cost Bama the game, but both Alabama losses have been marked by meltdowns from veteran players at the end.
Composure can’t be an issue, but it has become one. And in camera shots on the sideline after Law was flagged, he appeared to be trying to justify why he did it in the first place. This is one of those things that’s going to have to come from the top down and if it upsets players, then they’ll just have to be upset, but Bama has to start getting serious about cutting flags, especially for the truly stupid stuff like we’ve seen at the end of the Vanderbilt and Tennessee games.
3. Back to the running game for a moment – is it design, the OL, or something else? Jam Miller always seems to give his best effort, but Justice Haynes has appeared almost tentative at times in recent weeks. This is now the fourth straight game for Alabama where the running backs more or less failed to show up. We touched on it above how Tennessee won the point of attack, particularly DE-to-OT, but we’ve seen Kalen DeBoer’s teams rack up good yardage from running backs with talent inferior to what is in Tuscaloosa. Washington RB Dillon Johnson was a backup to Joquavious Marks at Mississippi State and couldn’t displace him; he ended up putting up 1,195 yards at UW in 2023 and is now on an NFL practice squad.
Furthermore, Alabama has a good tight end group that can aid in run blocking, but they don’t seem to be as effective now as they were at the beginning of the year. The problem with a dysfunctional running game is that it puts a lot of pressure back on a quarterback whose strength is not standing in the pocket and delivering. Jalen Milroe had a subpar game here but he didn’t have anything to fall back on, either. It’s a bad mix.
4. Second-half defense was stymied by multiple DB injuries. Alabama lost three safeties in this game, which we can’t recall ever happening before, at least not in our 28 years of covering Bama football. Devonta Smith was lost to a hamstring injury, Red Morgan appeared to pull up lame with a hamstring as well, and Keon Sabb bravely tried to keep re-entering the game time and again despite suffering from multiple wounds.
As such, Alabama played nearly the entire second half with Bray Hubbard and King Mack on the field together. While both are going to be key contributors in future years, neither has played much outside of blowouts, and having two inexperienced safeties out there together against an offense like Tennessee’s is a recipe for trouble, or at least for mental mistakes due to a lack of confidence and familiarity. Hubbard did step up and make what should have been a key stop against a screen pass in the fourth quarter, but the Bama offense couldn’t subsequently convert.
The winning touchdown pass went over Mack, but the ball was placed well in front of the receiver and even one of Alabama’s starting safeties probably couldn’t have gotten to it in time. Again, there were plenty of other things to blame for this loss but the secondary getting greener by the quarter didn’t help.
5. Tennessee was able to find something in its running game in the second half. The Volunteers did what Alabama could not do, and that was find a way to make their running backs relevant to the gameplan. Tennessee ran the ball 43 times for 214 yards (5.0 avg.) and 2 touchdowns, and those numbers even included yardage lost on three sacks of QB Nico Iamaleava. Dylan Sampson carried the ball 26 times for 139 yards (5.3 avg.) and 2 scores.
Tennessee used a mix of increased tempo, more tight end blocks inside the box and leverage against Alabama’s young safeties in the second half. Alabama’s inside linebackers played better than the last couple of weeks but there were still times when the second level was slow in getting to the hole.
Alabama mixed up its fronts and brought more pressure than in past weeks, and those changes did seem to help, but it seems like Bama needed to go to a big-front package more often rather than rely on the Wolf linebacker to have so much run-gap responsibility. Tennessee’s running game is what Alabama thought its own game would look like in the preseason, but it hasn’t developed that way.
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