Analyst: Cam Robinson a better talent, but Jonah Williams a better blocker

Before he was a college football analyst for ESPN, Matt Stinchcomb was an All-American offensive tackle at Georgia from 1995-98.

In addition to his on-the-field achievements, Stinchcomb was also picked for the Allstate AFCA Good Works Team, which rewards players for off-the-field community service. The SEC has 67 such honorees this season, more than any other conference.

A former first-round draft choice of the Oakland Raiders, few experts on television understand the ins and outs of line play better than Stinchcomb. It’s not difficult to sift through box scores and break down skill-position players based on catches, yards and touchdowns. However, more often than not, games are won and lost in the trenches.

Ahead of Saturday’s matchup between Alabama and Florida in the SEC Championship Game, the Crimson Tide appear to have the advantage up front on both sides of the ball. Not only is superior talent a factor, but so is superior health.

Stinchcomb spent some time with Saturday Down South to preview the conference title game and share his thoughts on the general state of O-line play.

SDS: Alabama plays Florida on Saturday in the SEC Championship Game. The Crimson Tide are 24-point favorites over the Gators, which equals the biggest spread in the 25-year history of this game. Do you look at these two teams on tape and see that much of a disparity, too?

MS: I think that might be conservative. I’m having a hard time thinking how Florida scores in this game. It may happen. I think it will happen. It hasn’t ever occurred in the history of the conference championship where a team pitches a shutout. Hey, it’s one of those boxes, one of the few boxes that has gone unchecked by Alabama under Nick Saban. Maybe they get that accomplished this week.

The fact that the Gators are as banged up as they are, you’d think coming into this game, certainly one of the more impressive defensive rosters in the country resides in Gainesville, Florida. The problem is, they won’t even be full force in this game. Even a fully healthy Florida Gator contingent I think will have an uphill climb versus Alabama. I think you’d make it more competitive, but the fact that they are as banged up and depleted as they likely are going to be, and are, in some key spots makes it more difficult to envision a more competitive outcome in this football game.

SDS: For ‘Bama, left tackle Cam Robinson is a finalist for the Outland Trophy. But if you read between the lines in Tuscaloosa, a lot of people are saying that right tackle Jonah Williams has been the better player as a true freshman. What’s your assessment of those two bookends?

MS: I would stay that Cam Robinson is more talented than Jonah Williams at this point. Jonah Williams (below) is a true freshman. Cam Robinson is an experienced veteran with a ton of physical tools. If we want to talk consistency and who’s performed the best on average over the course of the season, I would go with the true freshman, and it’s not even close.

In some big games, when he actually wanted to play and looked like he wanted to play, like in LSU, Cam Robinson looked like a dominating football player. I don’t think any other year would I consider Cam Robinson an Outland Trophy candidate given how up and down his performance has been this year.

That said, it’s a pretty down year for offensive line play in general, not that it’s an exclusive award in that regard. It just hasn’t been a great year in that area, so I think because of it, I think Cam Robinson and the fact that we maybe even call it a legacy award, look back to previous seasons, and just the fact that he does have a good bit of talent, that maybe he’s worthy of consideration for that award.

But if I look at just the 12 games that Alabama has played, in comparison to his fellow offensive line mate, I would probably tip the scales in favor of the true freshman over what is thought to be one of the best offensive lineman in the country in Cam Robinson.

SDS: With regard to UF, outside of left guard Martez Ivey, the offensive line has been a problem for quite some time. To be fair, the quarterbacking hasn’t been very good and there isn’t a lot of skill-position talent, either. How much blame does Florida’s line deserve for its failures?

MS: I’m somewhat biased in thinking offensive line play still matters. More and more, college football is proving me wrong. You could look at a number of different programs that achieve a great deal of success offensively, and they do it with offensive lineman that are just kind of a big blob of humanity in front of this fireworks show of offensive skill-position players. Because of that, teams are able to kind of engineer their way around that.

Florida is not built that way. Jim McElwain and (offensive coordinator) Doug Nussmeier both were a part of Alabama’s prominence offensively before it kind of evolved into what it’s become — a more perimeter, one-back, one tight end at the most, no-huddle offense. That wasn’t the case before. They huddled. They actually had a fullback at times, which is a dinosaur. Nobody does that anymore.

If you want to be a gap-scheme, “We’re going to beat you right here” type of an offense, which Florida has more of than a lot of other systems, you’ve got to win up front at times. And Florida hasn’t been capable of doing that consistently.

I actually think that David Sharpe has a ton of the tools to be a really good offensive football player. He doesn’t play with great balance, but I like him a lot as far as upside. Martez Ivey, probably overall by the time he’s done, will be one of the better offensive linemen in this country if, in fact, he can show a little bit better durability. He’s banged up quite a bit.

SDS: Speaking in general terms about the offensive line, the game has changed so much even since you played. Man-to-man blocking has been replaced almost entirely by zone schemes. Some guys don’t even bother to get out of a two-point stance. What’s your take on today’s line play?

MS: The term that comes to me is marginalized, bordering on irrelevant. You look at a lot of these systems, the ones that have a lot of success — like Ole Miss has a lot of success and has, historically had more if not as much as anyone else, success offensively versus Alabama. And I think there’s a reason for that. It’s because they basically forfeit any advantage or disadvantage that can be gained along the line of scrimmage from tackle to tackle. They just say, ‘We’re just not even going to attack you here, and we’re going to try to do our best to nibble at the edges of your defense.’

You look at some of these systems, Baylor (below) being one of them, one of many and maybe, probably, the most graphic illustration of an offense where the offensive linemen, those guys don’t even know what’s going on. They just run a play, and it’s almost like they’re on a need-to-know basis. They’ll run and maybe they’ll block, but who knows? It’s probably a pass. It could be a downfield pass going on behind them.

As long as it comes out early enough, the way games are officiated now, “You just block run up there, boys, and we’ll handle the rest back here. Don’t bother knowing what we’re trying to do offensively. You just show up at the chow hall, get to be about 290-310 pounds or something like that, stick your hand in the dirt, maybe just stay in a two-point stance, shoot forward for a couple of yards and we’ll do the rest.”

I think the fact that there’s so many tempo offenses, there are so many sprint formations, that it requires teams to change their emphasis in recruiting and their scholarship allocation. Whereas you could have a couple of extra misses on your offensive line even in respect to classes, you can’t afford to have those because those extra scholarships are now going to defensive backs, wide receivers and defensive linemen. Because you’ve got to have those to run these 70, upwards of 75, 77 plays a game, spread-formation sets with no huddle.

As marginalized as offensive line play is, the teams that can actually get you in a phone booth when they want to in short-yard situations and red-zone-area plays and goal line, those are the teams that win national championships. Because they can do both. They have the skill set. They have the philosophy, the offensive infrastructure to take advantage of pace, to take advantage of spreading the football field.

When the game gets condensed, when it slows down and when there’s not as much room to spread you out, they can actually get down and dirty, roll up their sleeves and gain yards. There’s not many teams out there than can do that. That’s kind of attributable to where the college football game is right now.

SDS: Saturday’s game at the Georgia Dome is clearly a mismatch on paper. However, is there a team out there nationally you feel can go toe to toe with the Tide and give them problems? Can this program be beaten without throwing up on itself with four turnovers and a dozen penalties?

MS: There’s a lot of teams that I want to say that about. I do think this: If you get Alabama on their best day, you have to play over your head, bottom line. They’ve got the best collection of players, especially defensively. They’ve optimized their personnel. They’ve had the best players for a while now, but now I think they have the ideal players for the way the game is played on the defensive side of football.

The area that would concern me would be the quarterback play. They’ve done a great job of engineering around Jalen Hurts, and he has really accommodated — acclimated is probably a better term — to the college football game to where I think those accommodations have kind of been diminished over the course of the season. They haven’t had to do as much to get around them.

You look at a team like Ohio State and J.T. Barrett, who is by far their best player on the football field. But he’s got guys that need to step up their play, Chris Samuel being one of them. Or just Deshaun Watson and Clemson.

I think it would be a team where they have a transcendent type of a talent at the most important position on the field and would be a distinct advantage over the one that Alabama would put out there, which would be a true freshman in Hurts. You have, in my eyes anyway, I would have to say it would be a Clemson or Ohio State.

I don’t think Washington has enough of the horses, and I don’t know that they’ve been tested enough over the course of the season. Whereas these other teams seemingly have, Ohio State probably more so than Clemson. I would give them a puncher’s chance. I hate that phrase, but that’s I think somewhat apropos this year given how dominant Alabama has been.

John Crist is the senior writer for Saturday Down South, a member of the FWAA and a voter for the Heisman Trophy. Send him an e-mail, like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter.

John Crist

John Crist is an award-winning contributor to Saturday Down South.