Alabama’s one weakness was abundantly clear in Week 3 and it reared its head again last week: the secondary.

While the unit improved against Kent State and Kentucky, it showed vulnerability again in Fayetteville against Arkansas. Alabama gave up 400 yards passing against the Hogs, slightly less than it allowed against Ole Miss.

Arkansas has a better passing game than the casual fan credits them for. Austin Allen is the most efficient quarterback in the conference aside from Chad Kelly. Jeremy Sprinkle rates right among the SEC’s finest tight ends with Evan Engram and O.J. Howard.

Keon Hatcher is a matchup nightmare standing 6-foot 2 with blazing speed to go with Jared Cornelius and Drew Morgan. Arkansas doesn’t have a 1-2 punch like Texas A&M or the depth of Ole Miss, but the team has plenty of talented pass-catchers.

Still, Alabama had far too many busted coverages, miscommunications or plays of just plain getting beat to the ball.

“We play zone, which means you get to an area and break on the ball,” head coach Nick Saban said at his press conference Wednesday. “We play man-to-man, which means, ‘I’ve got that cat, you’ve got that cat and he’s got that cat.’ So you play your man, we play that. Then, we have a couple things that we sort of match the pattern after the pattern distribution. That’s probably something that maybe some people don’t do, but we do, and I think once you understand the concepts of it, it’s not really that hard to do.”

In Saturday’s game, Ryan Anderson was left in coverage and got beat for a touchdown.

“The good news about the other thing is the player you have comes to you, but we can’t control what player you get,” Saban said. “So a linebacker could get on Jerry Rice. That’s why you can’t do that all the time, that’s really why you can’t play man-to-man all the time. If you’re going to break on the ball, you better have a really good pass rush, and you better make the ball come out quick or you can get hurt doing that.”

Arkansas’ biggest downfall was a poor offensive line. The Razorbacks were unable to get any running game going against the Crimson Tide.

Tennessee played Alabama close last year in part because Jalen Hurd was able to run the ball effectively, and he’s expected to play again this year. If Alvin Kamara can have a big game against his former team and Hurd is able to spell him and complement with power runs, Tennessee could be dangerous. Beating Alabama may come down to keeping the defense honest with a solid run game to set up the play-action passing game.

Tennessee’s passing game isn’t particularly dangerous, but it is good enough to complement a solid running game and present a challenge for Alabama.

On paper at least, Texas A&M appears to be the tougher matchup: a finesse run game led by Trayveon Williams, a mobile quarterback who has beaten Alabama previously and a host of big, physical receivers including Josh Reynolds, Christian Kirk and Ricky Seals-Jones.

Still, Tennessee has given opposing secondaries problems over the last three games. Had Georgia’s secondary covered the Hail Mary at the end of the game, the Alabama-Tennessee game would have lost a lot of its appeal. Nonetheless, it pits two teams at the top of their division’s standings right now.

Nick Saban would rather see the secondary play a boring, sound game than to make numerous flashy plays marred by other mistakes.

The mistakes haven’t proven costly thus far, but miscues will cost the Crimson Tide if they continue to occur during the next three games.