Quote:
Originally Posted by ninjavanish
I don't think Bama really played that badly, there were definitely some mistakes, but what really was the big difference was almost a matter of timing. Went sent blitzes on 3rd down almost everytime. And almost everytime we got there, just a second too late. Mettenberger's ability to ignore the blitz and get the ball out just ahead of a sack kept alabamas defense on the field. But despite converting all of those 3rd downs, bama was able to tighten up and eventually force a punt or a long fg on all but 3 drives. Lsu needed to capitalize on every opportunity to put points up, but due to some iffy play calling, they allowed to skilled opponent to stay within reach of victory.
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We won because of "iffy" play calling. That isn't the best our defense can do, we barely scraped by and I think it would have been a much cleaner win had we not been so predictable on third down the entire second half. LSU knew we were coming and acted accordingly. It's not that we played badly, and blitzing on 3rd isn't always lousy play calling, but being that predictable hurt us.
If not for that last offensive drive we would have lost, if Les Miles hadn't screwed up four plays we would have lost. We came within a hair of sending LSU to the SEC championship again and possibly excluding the SEC from the NC altogether. I don't think it would have happened if we had played a little more coverage, and a little less blitz, especially on 3rd down.
I also think we gave it to AJ a bit too much, he was obviously rattled and having an off night, thank god for that last drive, but the rest of the second half was awful. I'm no expert though and it's easy to say that after the fact.