There was always the chance that the addition of some 50 new players and offensive mastermind-slash-mongoose Gus Malzahn was going to give Alabama a much different game than the one it was expecting. But Alabama never expected this.
Florida State controlled this game. It was no fluke, no joke. The mongoose Malzahn killed another cobra. And he really didn’t even have to get that creative about it.
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Florida State was one of the worst teams in the country last year in the trenches. The defensive line was poor and the offensive line was worse. Against Alabama, the defensive line did enough to stop Alabama’s running game and the offensive line looked like the Philadelphia Eagles.
You can sum up the good on the Alabama side thusly: The special teams overperformed, WR Germie Bernard cemented his first-round draft status and Ty Simpson somehow managed to avoid multiple sacks and not totally give up, long after Florida State had removed any semblance of offensive balance from his available options. And you can stop there, because there’s not much else that doesn’t deserve to be thrown into a box labeled “DISASTER” in all caps.
This is going to be a trying time for Alabama in the next few weeks, because for many people the only acceptable outcome to this season was going to be a run deep into the College Football Playoff, if not winning the whole thing. Especially when preseason No. 1 Texas stunk up a trip to the Rust Belt earlier in the day to face Ohio State. Especially since that’s what Alabama fans believe they should get year after year, damn the analysis.
But if that’s going to happen in 2025, Alabama may be out of mulligans after the first week, and there’s nothing about this performance that makes us think the Crimson Tide can upset Georgia on the road, plus beat a Tennessee team that – at least offensively – may have actually improved with the loss of its starting quarterback of a year ago. Or, and especially OR, all caps again, take down an Auburn team in Auburn at the end of the regular season and beat a transfer quarterback in the process who made the Alabama defense look silly at Oklahoma last year.
This is to completely gloss over the rest of the schedule, which includes LSU, and Oklahoma again, and Wisconsin, although the latter program may have more issues than Alabama at the moment.
The reason all of this discussion is on the table is that we’re really not sure just how bad Alabama is right now or how good Florida State is. Regardless of how Florida State may have improved both its roster and its sideline, going directly from a 2-10 disaster to beating Alabama is just something that shouldn’t happen at the college level.
Much larger of a question, though, is what is this Alabama team really like? Is it put together in a way that it can rebound, improve week by week and still win the games it needs to win, with no further hiccups? Quite simply, is Alabama even … good?
The evidence of that will only come over the next few weeks. And if it doesn’t come quickly, the leashes that are already the length of earthworms will begin to tighten around the necks of those in charge of making decisions. Because, for better or worse, that’s how things are done within the world of Alabama football.
Here’s the Five-Point Breakdown for Alabama vs. Florida State:
1. DL won no battles for most of the game, and may not be built for the job. We’re not talking about specific techniques taught, we’re talking theory. Alabama has gotten specifically smaller along the defensive line, betting on a hybrid DT/DE model either because it couldn’t recruit the bigger bodies it wanted, or it sees something in the future of college offense that it doesn’t believe can be addressed with larger players.
At least this week, the choice appears to be folly. The loss of Tim Keenan III was clearly felt, but Keenan is a traditional nosetackle with about a 30- to 35-play snap count every game. Even if he had been healthy, he would have only been able to play about half the game. Jeremiah Beaman, who frustrated Michigan so much in the bowl game, appeared to get pulled early after being ridden out of position multiple times, although he did return to the game later on. James Smith’s presence was felt on a handful of plays, but not enough.
The best complete DL performance was probably turned in by redshirt freshman Isaia Faga, who has the photo-negative problem that Keenan has: Instead of being too big to play every snap, Faga is the smallest of the pure tackles, and would get beaten up if overused. The defense did make some positive adjustments at halftime – see the next note about inside linebackers – but it wasn’t done quickly enough, didn’t last long enough, and the coaches can’t invent a new set of tackles in the middle of the game. Every team on Alabama’s 2025 schedule will note how Florida State seemed to get 3 yards on even its worst inside running plays.
2. ILB was worse than DL play for the first half – slow to fill holes and didn’t tackle well when they got there. The primary “fix” for this in the second half – because to be fair, it did get better after halftime adjustments – was more use of Colorado transfer Nikhai Hill-Green, mostly in place of Justin Jefferson. Continuing with the smaller/quicker theme, Jefferson is an oversized safety trying to play inside linebacker, and he has to win matchups with speed and quickness more so than pure strength. Deontae Lawson’s return to the field got better later in the game, but he was largely absent from the camera lens in the first half, too.
The loss of Jihaad Campbell to the NFL was something Alabama was going to have to cope with; from what we saw today, we’re not sure the Jefferson-Lawson combination is going to be able to do it. Hill-Green got dinged up late in the game, adding another point of concern.
Alabama is going to have little choice but to work in bigger players like Cayden Jones and Luke Metz, because there were many cases where the DL seems to get an early stalemate in the hole, only for no help to get there in a timely fashion from behind. Also an issue was the departure of Malachi Moore at the nickel safety spot; his instincts, particularly in diagnosing the eye candy around the FSU running game, were sorely missed.
3. As profiled, RB needs work. But the OL still does, too. Alabama ran the ball 29 times for 74 yards (2.6 avg.), which is about where the Tide left off at the end of 2024. Those numbers won’t fly in the SEC any better than they flew today. Richard Young showed a few sparks, but ended the day not really making an impact. Daniel Hill fared a little better, but not much.
Statistically, scatback Kevin Riley, who almost no one expected to play in this game outside of special teams, was the best runner on the team, getting 31 yards on 5 carries and doing some of it between the tackles. But outside of Alabama’s opening drive, the running game stagnated. Geno VanDeMark had issues at right guard and Kam Dewberry was just OK at left guard. Tackle play was somewhat better up to the point that the coaches had to abandon the running game, but like the defensive line, the offensive line wasn’t winning enough battles.
Alabama tried more two-TE looks to help plug the weak spots but with Danny Lewis Jr. a late scratch, true freshman Kaleb Edwards had to fill in and he had a typical freshman day. Like DL and Tim Keenan, the loss of Jam Miller at running back was certainly an issue, but we don’t think Miller’s presence would have made more than an incremental difference. Like the DL, this can’t be fixed with the wave of a wand. Someone’s going to have to go back to the drawing board to design something to help the personnel on hand.
4. Ty Simpson’s performance was mostly clean, but not necessarily effective. How much of that is his fault, we can’t say right now. The closest analog to Simpson we can think of is Jake Coker early on in Coker’s Alabama career before everything came together. Simpson threw for 2 touchdowns and no interceptions, and proved to be hard to corral in the backfield. He’s more than enough for this team to win with, but he’s probably not able yet to carry the team on his back. He averaged just 5.9 yards per attempt, a terribly low number for any quarterback, and completed just 53.5 percent of his throws.
The most troubling thing to come out of his performance wasn’t any stat, however; it was how clearly he began rushing throws and throwing off his back foot when protection broke down. Again, protection is going to break down faster when there’s no threat of a run to keep the defense honest. But if what we saw against Florida State starts to become the norm – i.e., ineffective running calls and OL protection issues – he’s going to begin playing scared.
5. Playcalling looked great for one drive, then became over-reliant on the pass. This was the same complaint Seattle had about Ryan Grubb last year prior to firing him. Alabama’s first drive was one of its best in recent memory, a nine-minute march with an efficient mix of running and throwing. But then the game got out of hand, admittedly due mostly at first to the defense falling apart.
We saw an increasing number of downfield shots against unfavorable numbers, which started to feel like a bit of desperation setting in way too early. The whole thing felt that way, really, as if Alabama expected to be up 21-0 and when that didn’t happen, the team lost its composure. Germie Bernard put on a clinic – 8 catches for 146 yards – but that’s where the good news ended. Alabama needed more screens, more short-intermediate routes, but especially a more effective way to run the ball to keep the heat off Simpson.
Follow Jess Nicholas on X at @TideFansJessN