If the aim of Week 13 going forward is to schedule the opponent of least resistance, Alabama should win the Scheduling Of The Year Award for 2025.
Eastern Illinois brought a surprising number of fans to this game – the entirety of Section NN was bright blue, along with other pockets of blue sprinkled throughout the stadium; better than some SEC opponents have done here recently – but all they had to show for their trip was some barbecue, a trip to the Bryant Museum and an introduction to what real football looks like.
The destruction was thorough and overwhelming. Alabama accumulated 32 first downs to just 2 for Eastern Illinois. Alabama outgained the Panthers 269-14 on the ground and 270-20 through the air. Forget “Saban-esque,” those are numbers that make people start reminiscing about vintage Paul “Bear” Bryant teams of the 1960s and 1970s. It’s very likely that if you were born from the middle of Generation X forward, the Eastern Illinois Panthers put up the worst performance in Bryant-Denny Stadium that you’ve ever been alive to see.
It wasn’t always pretty, though. Alabama quite frankly looked far less impressive with its starters on the field in the first half than it did after the subs took over in the second half, at least on offense. Alabama’s first-half offense was plodding, out of sequence and generally unimpressive. But defensively, Alabama toyed with the Panthers; every blitz call worked, every lineman got penetration against his foe on the EIU offensive line, and the Panthers quickly learned that they would have no passing game on this day, as Alabama was averaging an obscene 1.2-second snap-to-affect time (STAT) on dropbacks. Eastern Illinois soon decided not to keep feeding its quarterbacks to the wolves and opted to run the ball twice as often as throwing it, which is not how this team is built to operate.
The big questions for Alabama, of course, had nothing to do with Eastern Illinois. Auburn looms on the horizon, in Jordan-Hare Stadium, with a playoff bid hanging in the balance. Lose to Auburn and Alabama has virtually zero chance to go to the College Football Playoff for a second year in a row. The heat would quickly ratchet up on Kalen DeBoer and potentially turn 2026 into a mandate: make the playoffs or else.
Going into this matchup, Alabama will probably be without star tight end Josh Cuevas. New players were given the chance to apply for the job against Eastern Illinois and a couple made convincing arguments, which we’ll get into below. Daniel Hill, who would figure to get no less than half of the rushing attempts next week, may have injured a hand or wrist trying to make a tackle on one of Ty Simpson’s interceptions, but the injury did not appear serious given how Hill was treated after coming off the field.
In all, Alabama did a good job managing injuries in this game, always the chief concern when playing overmatched teams in Week 13. It got a shutout, ruled the stat sheet and played most if not all of the players, walk-ons included, who were part of pregame Senior Day activities. This is exactly what out-of-conference scheduling should look like if the SEC follows through with its nine-game conference schedules in the future.
At this point, there’s nothing left to do other than hunker down, grind some tape and begin fretting over the Auburn game. Because try as they might, Eastern Illinois couldn’t really give Alabama anything substantive to worry about from this game.
Here’s the Five-Point Breakdown for Alabama-Eastern Illinois:
1. For the second week in a row, QB Ty Simpson looked late and uncertain; his first INT was a play he can’t repeat going forward. Simpson has been banged up for a bit now, which makes it curious that Alabama would play him the entire first half. For their troubles, Alabama saw Simpson hang a couple of interceptions on his stat sheet and take a few more unnecessary hits prior to Auburn week. We’re ambivalent about the decision to start Simpson, especially if the coaches were hoping he’d get on a hot streak and boost his confidence, but that didn’t happen. At least the correct decision was made not to expose him to further contact in the second half. Oklahoma’s defense is good enough to drive most quarterbacks crazy – watch some tape from their beatdown of Missouri and QB Matt Zollers today if you can stomach it – but we weren’t expecting to see Simpson remain off his game against Eastern Illinois. Both Austin Mack and Keelon Russell had superior days just from the standpoint of comfort in the pocket. This and the placekicking situation (along with Cuevas’ injury) are really the only major concerns headed into Auburn week, because at this point the running game just is what it is. Here’s hoping Simpson has just been lulling Auburn to sleep for a couple of weeks.
2. EIU OL may have been the worst we’ve ever seen, and Alabama’s DL feasted upon it. We’re not kidding around about this; we profiled Eastern Illinois’ offensive line as problematic and a clear mismatch in a fight with Alabama’s defensive line, but even we had to shake our heads at just how much of a gulf there was between these two units. Alabama recorded 3 sacks and 9 tackles for loss. For reference, that’s a tackle for loss about 1 out of every 3 snaps for Eastern Illinois. Alabama got easy pressure from across the line, and the linebackers’ success rate on blitzes had to approach 90-100 percent efficiency. It was such a mismatch that even late in the game, when Alabama was loading up on walk-ons in the linebacker and defensive back groups, Eastern Illinois couldn’t get past Alabama’s third- and fourth-team DL to even engage the players in the back six. Not only was the game never in doubt, the shutout wasn’t in doubt, either. Alabama’s defense has played progressively better up front each week, and is running at a very high level right now.
3. The drama at placekicker needs to end, but not much can change until the offseason. Raise your hand if you remember going into Jordan-Hare Stadium with drama suddenly popping up at the placekicker position. Whether it was 1997 with Chris Kemp and A.J. Diaz involved, or the Kick Six kerfuffle, this is one of those things that just seems to keep popping up. Conor Talty has now missed ultra-short field goals in consecutive weeks. Against Oklahoma, cameras caught him laying into LS David Bird after a high snap; this week, he made some kind of gesture toward the student section and after that, was booed roundly on each of his extra-point tries. The friction between Talty and Bird was apparently enough to trigger a change in long snappers, as Alex Rozier snapped for placement kicks against Eastern Illinois, but it didn’t help on the scoreboard. There’s way too much going on here right now. Unfortunately for Alabama, neither Peter Notaro nor Reid Schuback look markedly better. Kick height is an issue for Notaro, while general accuracy can be an issue for Schuback based on what we’ve seen in scrimmages. It’s probably Talty or bust going forward, which might force DeBoer’s hand on fourth down in plus territory against the Tigers and in the playoffs, if Alabama gets that far. This much we know: Someone needs to sit all parties down and get them to cut the noise for at least one more week, or risk having yet another Alabama-Auburn game outcome affected negatively by craziness in the kicking game.
4. Is the running game fixed? Probably not. Jam Miller continues to miss open holes and cutbacks and doesn’t appear to be the same running back that he was before suffering a concussion against Missouri. Daniel Hill is now dealing with whatever minor injury came out of his tackle attempt today. Kevin Riley had a nice day but there will always be questions about his size against SEC opponents; against Eastern Illinois, he was able to use his speed and cutting ability against players of like size. Probably the biggest news item to come out of this area was Akylin Dear being the fourth running back Alabama used rather than the sixth. That could mean some carries against Auburn, but just how many? Alabama seems determined to work Miller right now even though his field vision is suspect. On the flip side, Richard Young dropped all the way to the tail end of the running back depth chart in this game, behind even Dre’lyn Washington. Alabama averaged 5.5 yards per carry in this game and rolled up 269 rushing yards, but 70 of those were quarterback runs. The entire position group will have to be evaluated going into 2026.
5. A plethora of new players and walk-ons saw action; here’s who we noticed having breakout performances. The most important to talk about in the short term was senior TE Brody Dalton, who caught 3 passes and twice ran over defenders after the catch. It’s relevant because with Josh Cuevas out, Alabama will need some options at the H position. True freshman Marshall Pritchett also worked there and his 4 catches led all receivers. On our depth chart, Pritchett and fellow true freshman Kaleb Edwards will start at H and Y respectively next week, with Jay Lindsey backing up Edwards and Dalton probably the guy behind Pritchett – assuming Danny Lewis Jr. doesn’t magically reappear from a foot injury. Defensively, Alabama went to reserve ILBs Q.B. Reese, Cayden Jones and Luke Metz early in the game, and all three played well. Metz and Jones were given especially long auditions and combined for 8 tackles. Qua Russaw got 2 tackles in very limited work, his first since being hurt several weeks ago. Edric Hill and Tim Keenan were problems for the EIU offensive line every time they were in the game. Among the walk-ons, at one time Alabama had 4 walk-ons out of 5 defensive backs on the field, with S Kolby Peavy getting into the game very early and playing a lot of snaps to lead that group. Peavy finished with 3 tackles and 0.5 tackles for loss. He and Ivan Taylor, who tied for the team lead in tackles Saturday with Metz, Jones and Bray Hubbard, could be key figures going forward with Dre Kirkpatrick Jr. suspended and Kameron Howard suddenly absent from the sideline today. On offense, WR M.J. Chirgwin had another nice catch and we’re fairly convinced he could get a few snaps in the regular rotation here and there and acquit himself well. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t think it was cool that there’s now a second Carruth in the Alabama record books, with QB Cade Carruth getting a carry for 10 yards to join his uncle Paul Ott Carruth in team lore. Alabama played a total of 97 players against Eastern Illinois, according to official school statistics. That has to be at least a record for the post-Bryant era.
Follow Jess Nicholas on X at @TideFansJessN