Ad Disclosure
New No. 1 Alabama is coming off its biggest win of the season, a 25-20 victory over Mississippi State that never felt quite as close as the final score indicates. This week, the Crimson Tide get a nominal tune up when they face Western Carolina, a Southern Conference team in the FCS. With the Crimson Tide as heavy favorites on Saturday, let’s take a look at some of the interesting numbers up and down the roster.
THE GOOD
- 3,280. Blake Sims is having a fantastic year, and he’s on pace to have the most total offense of any one player in Nick Saban’s tenure. With 2,734 yards through 10 games, Sims is on pace for 3,280 regular season yards. If he keeps that pace up and Alabama makes it all the way to the national championship game, he’ll likely top 4,000 total yards.
- 8.7. The Crimson Tide may rely heavily on Amari Cooper, but he’s been coming through all season. Cooper is hauling in 8.7 catches per game, tops in the SEC by more than 3 catches. It’s not so bad to rely on someone so reliable, as Cooper catches better than 65 percent of his targets, per ncaasavant.com.
- 3.7. Alabama’s struggled with mobile quarterbacks in the past, but they handled Dak Prescott pretty well last Saturday. The Tide’s defense limited the Heisman candidate to just 3.7 yards per carry on 22 attempts, stuffing him at the line and throwing the Bulldogs offense out of whack. That’s a good sign heading into the Iron Bowl against Nick Marshall and Auburn.
THE BAD
- 4. The magic number for Alabama seems to be 4 yards per carry. The Crimson Tide have won by an average of 30.8 points per game in the six games in which they’ve been over that number, and their average margin is 1.75 points in the four games they’ve been under 4 yards per carry, going 3-1 in those games.
- 0. Alabama hasn’t returned a single punt in the last three weeks, giving them no help in flipping field position. While they didn’t need it against Mississippi State, thanks to some excellent punting of their own, but the Tide are averaging more than 10 yards per return on the season.
- 1. For whatever reason, Alabama is never all that great at forcing and recovering fumbles. In the last month, they’ve had just one takeaway via fumble recovery. The Crimson Tide have only recovered 10 or more fumbles once in the last five years and have 6 fumble recoveries this season.
A former freelance journalist from Philadelphia, Brett has made the trek down to SEC country to cover the greatest conference in college football.
