Thoughts About the "Overall" Challenges

C would be a good grade for this year and the c stands for conservative. Playing games not to lose instead of dominating. Offense had no consistency and the D flashes of being dominant but too little of it.

First person that Kirby Smart tried to hire when leaving Tuscaloosa was Scott Cochran. Normal circumstance, Nick Saban is not opposed to releasing a coach that wants to move on. Not so in Cochran's case. Quickly Saban changed the numbers on his pay check. Smart and Cochran are very good friends and there was good reason for Smart to try and hire Cochran. Article below goes into a lot of detail about "winning in the fourth quarter", a problem that has been discussed on Dawgs.com and many other sites. Kirby was not blowing smoke soon after arriving in Athens about "much" needed to be done in our football program. Nick Saban knew, Kirby Smart watched and learned about talented coaches . . . . talented coaches like Scott Cochran.

www.stack.com/a/scott-cochran-alabama-football-powerhouse

Interesting offer to this young man, Cole Phillips. Cairo, Georgia Syrup Makers. Kicks and punts.

Coaches recruiting hard.



Edit . . . .

thriller wrote: Got a few spare minutes here, so PLEASE indulge me in playing the "if" game. I usually don't believe in it, but sometimes it can be fun, and that is the only spirit in which it is offered up. And believe me, I KNOW these "ifs" could also go in the other direction, but please stay with me on this and I think you'll see my point.

"If" we had been disciplined enough not to engage in excessive celebration against UT.

Or - "if" we had just put ONE GUY between the ball and the receiver on the last play of the game, we won the UT game. (Let the flames begin!)

Another - "IF" we had just run the damn ball two times up the gut against Vandy - MAYBE would have won that one too. But let's set that "if" to the side, because that game had a LOT of potential "ifs" in it.

So moving on to another "if" - "IF" we had been more aggressive in our last possession against GT and run the damn ball up the gut for a first down instead of trying to get fancy by passing.

Do you realize how close this team was to being 9-3? {OH THE FLAMES - - - - PLEASE THROW ME SOME WATER!!} "IF" frogs had wings they wouldn't bump their butts when they hop, right? But again, stay with me here - here comes the point.

I heard a guy on the radio this morning saying that he thinks it's a GOOD THING we lost to UT and GT this year, so we don't go into the winter thinking how great this team really is . . . he may have a point there. We are not good at all, in truth. And (this is the real point of my "if" game) KNOWING that we aren't that good is where we really need to start off in preparing for next season. Can you imagine the DISASTER that could have happened "if" my "ifs" had come TRUE?! We'd be 9-3 or possibly even 10-2, thinking we're just that LITTLE BIDDY STEP away from the PLAYOFFS, when in reality we are a POOR football team.

Now having said that, I'm going to agree with SouthernDawg here - we are in good shape for next year (yes, I'm sick of saying that). But we are. At least we didn't redshirt Eason - can you imagine how bad things would be "if" we DID? We'd be heading into next season with a ROOKIE QB.

So what I think we need is a bigger O-Line that can block, and taller receivers who can catch. Honestly, the rest of that team isn't in that bad a' shape. And if CKS continues to build on what is already a "not-so-stinky" defense - we may actually graduate to being a pretty good team.

But the "ifs" are what makes college football so much fun. So everyone here - you are ALL my friends, agreement or not - don't forget to enjoy the game. I probably enjoyed this season more this year than most, just because I now have a new job that takes more of my worry than the other parts of my life. I hope everyone here had as much fun as I did listening/watching the games.

With you thriller, but if some of the ifs with Nichols and Mizzuo went the other way we would be 5-7.