As the transfer portal grinds along in the background, we’re going to take a look today at Alabama’s 2025 rushing attack – if “attack” is an appropriate word to use. As was once said about Jaguar automobiles, “they don’t accelerate, they … advance.”
Alabama advanced the ball down the field to the tune of 466 carries for 1,562 yards, a 3.4-yard-per-carry average, and 21 touchdowns. Those were dreadful figures that caused Alabama to rank 123rd out of 134 teams in FBS. The worst of those numbers was the 3.4-ypc figure, which explained why Alabama chose not to lean on the running game more in crucial situations.
What follows is somewhat of a data dump that plots five numbers on one chart, but we need to explain first how to read this chart.
Columns 1 and 2 are Alabama’s number of carries and yards gained per game for all 15 games this year. The name of the opponent can be found on the X-axis. Larger numbers, especially in yards gained, are typically better for the purposes of this discussion. One note of importance: Using the NFL model and not the college model, we are NOT counting sack yardage lost against the running game here, to hopefully get a better understanding of just what the problems were in the planned running game itself.
Columns 3, 4 and 5 deal with what Alabama faced in terms of opposing defenses. Column 3 is the rush defense ranking of the opponent. Columns 4 and 5 are proprietary numbers that we use to attempt to determine which defenses are better than others. Column 4 is a defensive efficiency statistic that takes into account the prowess of all five major phases of an opposing defense (total defense, rush defense, raw pass defense, pass efficiency defense and scoring defense). Column 5 then compares those five categories against all other teams in FBS and assigns a value to reflect that team’s overall ratings, using no subjective rankings or analysis. Up to this point in the model, we are giving you pure numbers.
There is one exception: Because Eastern Illinois was not an FBS team, and because FCS rankings rarely matter when facing FBS opponents, Eastern Illinois was given ratings of 135 for all five defensive categories. Is that completely accurate? Probably not; EIU was bad even for an FCS opponent, but we feel that ranking FCS opponents for the purpose of this exercise is not the best use of time.
So if you’re reading the graph and are trying to make sense of this – for Columns 1 and 2, larger numbers are better. For Columns 3, 4 and 5, lower numbers are better. A “perfect” score in Column 5, for instance, would have been 0.0, and Indiana nearly hit it.
In summary, the games in which Alabama did its best in running the football were the games where there was the greatest spread between Columns 1/2 and Columns 3/4/5.
Takeaway 1: Alabama’s best rushing performances of the year were against Auburn, Oklahoma in the regular season, and Vanderbilt. Yes, Alabama ran for a ton of yardage against Louisiana-Monroe and Eastern Illinois, but both of those opponents maxed out the “bad defense” rating in Column 4, so it would be hard for Alabama to pat itself on the back for those performances. Overall, the best performance relative to the quality of defense Alabama faced came against Auburn, when Alabama ran up 178 yards on 38 carries (4.7 avg.) against the 11th-ranked rush defense in the country. Alabama also did well against Vanderbilt, which had the 18th-ranked rush defense in FBS, and in the regular-season meeting against Oklahoma.
Takeaway 2: The worst performance was by far against Georgia in the rematch. But Tennessee was substandard as well. Both the Georgia and Indiana games were washouts as far as the running game was concerned, but in both cases, Alabama was either forced out of its plan to run the ball due to the margin on the scoreboard, or simply didn’t get enough snaps because the defense couldn’t stop drives quickly enough. Alabama ran the ball 38 times against Georgia in the regular season but just 16 times in the SEC Championship Game. The story was similar against Indiana in the Round of 8, as Alabama ran just 17 times (compared to Indiana’s 50, no less). However, the hidden struggle came against Tennessee, where Alabama ran 32 times for 138 yards (4.3 avg.), not a bad number on its face but probably below expectations given the Volunteers ranked 73rd in rushing and put up a 44.8 in defensive efficiency, not very far off that of Louisiana-Monroe.
Takeaway 3: Bama struggled the most when Jam Miller was either out or limited. Not much of a surprise here, right? Lose your starting running back, struggle in the running game. Miller was knocked out of the Missouri game and what followed was the mediocre result against Tennessee. He was not available for the SEC Championship Game, and his replacements Daniel Hill and A.K. Dear combined for 21 yards on 7 carries. Miller was also limited against Oklahoma and Indiana in the CFP, and finished with poor numbers against OU and virtually no action at all against the Hoosiers. However, “the most” is subjective here, because there were struggles even when Miller was available. That leads us to …
Takeaway 4: Alabama followed up a year of relative balance with a year of incredible imbalance. Alabama finished the 2025 season ranked 82nd in total offense, 123rd in rushing offense and 27th in passing offense. In 2024, despite having a quarterback situation that bordered on the schizophrenic depending on the week, Alabama finished 42nd in total offense, 47th in rushing offense and 56th in passing offense. As for the oft-repeated rhetoric that Alabama only ran the ball well in 2024 because Jalen Milroe was so dynamic outside the pocket, consider the following items:
- Jamarion Miller, 2024: 145 carries, 668 yards, 4.6 avg., 7 TD
Jamarion Miller, 2025: 130 carries, 504 yards, 3.9 avg., 3 TD
Then, there was the production of the top backups:
- Justice Haynes, 2024: 79 carries, 448 yards, 5.7 avg., 7 TD
Daniel Hill, 2025: 75 carries, 284 yards, 3.8 avg., 6 TD
And lastly, there is the year-over-year statistical comparison for Richard Young, who drifted between third- and fourth-team status both years, but who was credited with a start in the 2025 opener at Florida State:
- Richard Young, 2024: 27 carries, 146 yards, 5.4 avg., 2 TD
Richard Young, 2025: 23 carries, 64 yards, 2.8 avg., 2 TD
The overall takeaway here is that year-over-year production comparisons were down across the board in 2025, despite Alabama allegedly having more of its core offense installed with Ty Simpson as quarterback and Ryan Grubb as offensive coordinator.
Summary/Subjective Analysis
To know what made Alabama’s offense struggle in 2025, especially on the ground – because Simpson did indeed put up passing numbers that were better than Milroe’s (305-of-473, 64.5%, 3,567 yards, 28 TD, 5 INT, 145.2 QBR for Simpson, versus 205-of-319, 64.3%, 2,844 yards, 16 TD, 11 INT, 148.8 QBR for Milroe) – we would have to be able to point to a factor or combination of factors that led to the drop in production.
Sticking solely to the numbers, Alabama finished the 2025 season facing the nation’s No. 4, No. 3 and No. 2 rushing defenses over its last three weeks. Add in Oklahoma in the regular season and Auburn, and Alabama’s final five FBS opponents ranked No. 3, No. 11, No. 4, No. 3 and No. 2 against the run. That’s a tall order for any team to face, even teams with good rushing attacks.
However, part of what it takes to win in the SEC is being able to do one thing very well (run or pass), and doing the other at a level sufficient to keep defenses honest. We’ve beat this drum for years, but Steve Spurrier’s best Florida teams weren’t the ones that made the “Fun-‘N’-Gun” come to life in the air, but were the ones that had the best rushing attacks. Still, Spurrier won with a QB-centric offense predicated on the pass, and it’s possible for Alabama to win doing the same.
But what we saw in 2025 wasn’t at “a level sufficient to keep defenses honest.” It was far from that. Was it because of Jam Miller’s frequent injuries? Did Alabama need a talent upgrade at running back, especially following the loss of Justice Haynes to the transfer portal at the end of the 2024 season? Was it the fault of the offensive line, either personnel or coaching, or both? What of Alabama’s running back coaching? Or was it the fault of play design, playcalling flow or other sideline factors that can’t be measured on a graph?
Or is the answer to the above paragraph simply “yes” to all?
In our opinion, there’s a little bit of all of that last paragraph involved, in addition to Alabama needing to commit to an identity. Mike Leach made the SEC uncomfortable for years by taking a ho-hum roster and pressuring defenses with crazy concepts like wide OL splits, running backs as de facto wide receivers and a stupid-simple offensive gameplan that he famously could fit on a couple of index cards. But the key to the success of an offense like that is to commit to it. Leach was committed to his offense so completely that his teams didn’t carry tight ends on the roster.
Whether Alabama can compete in the SEC with a turbocharged version of Leach’s offense is a question for another day. Assuming the running game is still of some importance, Alabama needs to figure out how to make it work. It wasn’t that Alabama didn’t commit carries to the running game, it was that Alabama didn’t get results from the ones it committed. We should be able to tell how committed Alabama is to improving the ground game by how it builds its offensive line this offseason and whether Kalen DeBoer makes changes to how the offense is built.
Follow Jess Nicholas on X at @TideFansJessN