Is Alabama finally vulnerable on defense?

Giving up 391 yards and 22 points to an up-and-coming Mountain West team like Colorado State isn’t the worst crime imaginable for a defense. Particularly when that defense is playing with a large lead secured by its own team’s explosive offense.

Yet there was something very strange about seeing Colorado State pull those numbers off against the Alabama Crimson Tide defense on Saturday. In particular, seeing the Rams convert 10-for-18 on third downs, when you’d expect a Nick Saban-coached defense to really clamp down, was jarring.

The Alabama defense was an area of mild concern before the season, largely from the perspective of “can this team win a national title with this unit?” rather than concerns for normal teams like, “will we be able to field a competent second cornerback this season?”

But it seems that some of those concerns are valid, especially in light of the perhaps Pyrrhic victory that the season opener against Florida State proved to be with all of its injuries.

Replacing an all time great pass-rush

That was the big challenge for Alabama this season. Star DE/DT Jonathan Allen led the team with 10.5 sacks while OLBs Ryan Anderson and Tim Williams chipped in nine each. Star inside linebacker Reuben Foster was also effective, adding five sacks with his effective blitzes, making him the fourth leading pass-rusher. They’re all in the NFL now.

Part of the plan for replacing all of that production was to lean on Swiss army knife linebacker Rashaan Evans, who was fifth on the team with four sacks a year ago while seeing mostly spot duty until the playoffs. But Evans pulled his groin and has yet to return to the field, though he’s expected back soon.

The Tide sought to replace Anderson and Williams with a wave of new outside linebackers but have experienced a wave of injuries that have taken out Christian Miller and Terrell Lewis for the year and sidelined Anfernee Jennings.

Thus far Alabama has secured five sacks in three games and has yet to find a dominant pass-rusher, much less come close to fielding three at a time as the Tide could in 2016. Alabama has played really good defense this decade with units that didn’t excel at applying pressure but it’s still a rather sizable downgrade from the 2016 unit.

Maintaining dominance in the middle of the field

Saban might or might not have an outstanding pass-rush in a given year but his teams always control the middle of the field and stop the run. Yet Colorado State converted multiple third downs on the ground and overall showed a knack for doing some damage to the Tide on some standard running plays.

For instance, here they are climbing up to Alabama linebackers on a lead zone play early in the game:

The Rams weren’t consistently good running in this game — 144 yards on 40 carries — but you can already see some warning signs here that they might move the chains. The backside Ram guard climbs straight up to middle linebacker Shaun Dion Hamilton, the great hope for Alabama fielding yet another All-American inside backer, and the tight end keeps sam linebacker James Mosley out of the cutback lane to allow a 6-yard gain on first down.

The Alabama defensive line fails to command double teams or to blow things up in the backfield and then the linebackers fail to fit all of their gaps. That happened a strange number of times in this game, often on standard zone plays.

Above is one of the most popular plays in modern football, a “split zone” run with a bubble route combination attached. A DE/OLB is initially left unblocked but then trapped by a pulling H-back while the rest of the line blocks a standard inside zone run.

All of the normal gaps created by inside zone are there to be accounted for as well as a new gap created by the H-back trapping the DE. What’s more, the bubble route holds two defenders (the corner and either the nickel or strong safety) so that the defense can’t get an extra man to defend the gap from either of those two positions.

Split zone with a bubble combo is a very tricky play to defend and Alabama simply didn’t defend it very well here or at other points in the game.

Again on each of these plays, the Rams are releasing linemen downfield onto the linebackers off the defensive line very quickly and getting away with it. Linebacker Mack Wilson, No. 30, is repeatedly caught trying to read flow flat footed. He was there in place of Keith Holcombe, who wasn’t lighting the world on fire either.

It appears the Alabama plan was to use the unblocked DE to step inside and spill the ball outside to the middle linebacker Hamilton, who can be seen in both examples scraping wide expecting to make the tackle in space. Instead, each time the ball went right down the middle as the nose tackle failed to command a double team and a guard cleared out the remaining linebacker.

Of course Saban can patch things up, coach up his young defensive replacements or welcome back some of his injured players, and get Alabama playing at a higher level than they showed against the Rams. But with so many injuries to a team already looking to replace so many key starters, it should be concerning in Tuscaloosa to see the Tide struggle with standard zone plays from non-Power 5 offenses.

If the Crimson Tide can’t dominate up front on defense, what’s their identity?