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Checking on the temperature in Tuscaloosa after Alabama’s first loss of the season.
WARMING UP
The run defense. It didn’t make a difference in the long run, since Bo Wallace’s pinpoint passing in the fourth quarter helped knock the Tide out, but Alabama turned Ole Miss into a one-dimensional team. They shut down Mississippi’s running game to the tune of 2.25 yards per carry, the lowest average they’ve held a team to this season, and Ole Miss still pounded the ball 32 times. They got beaten by one of the best efforts of the opposing quarterback’s career, and not for the first time.
COOLED OFF
Blake Sims. I hope you didn’t overreact to Sims’ record-setting performance against Florida. Sims has proven he’s a very good quarterback, but he showed that he’s not ready to pick apart an elite defense quite yet. He still completed better than 60 percent of his passes against Ole Miss, but for only 7.4 yards per attempt, or about 3 yards less than his season average. Sims also made his most critical mistake of the season, forcing a ball into double coverage to a receiver not named Amari Cooper that resulted in a game-sealing interception.
THAWING
O.J. Howard. It seems as if Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin have remembered the kind of talent they have at tight end. The problem, though, is that Howard all of a sudden doesn’t seem ready for action. He got plenty of looks against Ole Miss, finishing with 3 catches for 81 yards, but had multiple drops, committed a costly penalty on Alabama’s failed game-winning drive and got out-jumped by a much smaller cornerback on a throw to the end zone that could have won it for the Crimson Tide. Maybe now we know why Howard wasn’t seeing the ball to start the season.
ICED
Adam Griffith. The Crimson Tide kicker, in his first year of handling the duties full time, is struggling big time kicking the ball. The sophomore has missed three of his last four attempts. All three misses came from at least 40 yards out, and one was a 51-yard attempt that never had a chance of going in. Saban appears to have plenty of faith in his kicker, but should probably trust his potent offense a little more when his team stalls out in the maroon zone.
A former freelance journalist from Philadelphia, Brett has made the trek down to SEC country to cover the greatest conference in college football.
