I had one of those rare weekends — wedding anniversary weekend getaway — where I was not committed to watching the Alabama game. We had things to do, sights to see, burgers to eat. Heck, I was doing my best not to even check the score. Let the universe do its work.
But, then my wife took me to a local bar at some point late in the 2nd quarter, and the game was on. And I could definitely get used to turning on the Tide to see us already up by 3 or 4 touchdowns. Roll Tide! Easy peasy, right?
Let’s cruise around the fun stuff before we touch on any consternation. There are a few charts that I like to look at first when I didn’t mean to catch a game, including the Game Wave, which was basically meant for this use case:
I walked into the bar right at the end of that series of 7’s at the end of the first half. It looks like Keelon and the offense had been able to rack up scores without really having to put that many good plays together: putting up 28 points from only 13 successful plays in the first half is huge, at over 2 points per successful play! That’s not a metric I track closely — it’s something like the Explosiveness Index, which is weirdly not loaded in this game’s data this week — but you’ll have to believe me that it’s remarkable.
The other good “I skipped the game; how’d it go?” chart is the Play Map. And, similar to the Play Maps in the relative shootout against FSU last week, it was a spiky one: that 75-yarder to Lotzier Brooks in the 1st quarter was not only the longest play for the Tide this season, it was also the beginning of a delightful trend in this game.
Keelon connected with receivers on long shots six more times in this game, plus we put up 3 more explosive rushes. And really, we hardly saw many “non-explosive successful plays” until the 4th quarter, when burning clock became more important than scoring.
Another metric we haven’t talked about this season: that “Average Extra Yards” dotted line here. It’s an odd bird, but tries to support Success/Efficiency metrics by asking, “well, how successful were the plays exactly?” And they were very successful in this one, with lots of extra yards gained in that first half. Things drifted during the 2nd half — a mum 3rd quarter, plus a 4th quarter clock drain — but by then the extra yards had already basically decided the game.
But yes, you’re right, it wasn’t perfect. I’d love to say this was “Tua vs. Vanderbilt 2018” all over again, but the Tide is still a work in progress.
Because, yeah the offense still isn’t coming out the gate at a run. That’s another 3-and-out, at home no less, where Grubb had a “plan A” and it didn’t pan out again. For what it’s worth, “plan A” this time was to Run the Dang Ball, which should make the Gumps around here happy even in failure … right? Right!?
Anyway, Grubb (2026 edition) does seem to have a good “Plan B” each game, and this time, it was “let the budding star quarterback Throw the Dang Ball.” So, we get a 1-shot touchdown, then drives of 9, 6, and 5 plays, all with above average SRs and strong Explosiveness. Pawwwl the coach made the Tide a dang Air Raid offense Pawl.
The Gamecocks did start to sniff out “Plan B” at some point, and you can see some less-than-inspiring drives that followed, but a few long drives towards the end of the game put us back on track.
And you can see the same effect in the SR/XR line chart: Alabama started off dead as a doorknob before soaring into a ~50-60% (high) SR range for the rest of the first half. Things got sleepy in the 3rd — we can’t have everything we desire, I suppose — before rounding out in the 4th quarter.
To South Carolina’s credit, they were pretty steady! And by “pretty steady,” I mean “steadily below average in both major metrics” and the decisive losers of this football game. Cluck cluck.
Sure, we’d love to see more out of the running game: 10% XR is actually really solid for rushing explosiveness — we don’t break down Run vs. Pass here, we just call ’em explosive if it’s a 15-yard play — but that
But when you’ve got a passing line that looks like this, it’s hard to complain too much: we nearly doubled up South Carolina in Passing Efficiency and outperformed ’em on the ground too. Those are easy wins in a game that we weren’t expecting to be a cakewalk.
You know, at the end of the day Keelon only threw the ball 27 times. It’s not nothing, but for a game where we had to lean on the Passing game, he made quick work of it, with a 59% Passing SR (not including the 2 sacks) and 26% Passing XR, which is flirting with the “Tua Zone.”
(LaNorris Sellers and the Gamecocks’ passing game was pretty ghastly, with an INT as the cherry on top. Let’s not dwell on it, it stinks in here.)
And, listen, this is not my favorite chart coming out of this game, given all these unsuccessful rushes. I mean, Daniel Hill, where’s our efficiency gone, my friend? And you younger backs: did we not have the juice today? (It’s the gameplan, the OL, the predictability, yada yada).
But Keelon’s rushing line still counts, folks. And that’s 4/5 successful rushes for him (80% Rushing SR), with an explosive one in there to keep things spunky.
Kevin Riley got an attempt in there as well — along with 2 receiving attempts; interesting! — and we got to see A.K. Dear on the football field in Crimson for the first time in 2026.
Backs and Ends (Tight ones)
Speaking of Kevin Riley; the running backs got 3 targets today (with one more from Daniel Hill). None of these were successful, which is a shame, but having the option on tape seems like it has value regardless.
But the Tight Ends were a different story: Between Kaleb Edwards (4 Successful, 1 Explosive), Marshall Pritchett (2 Explosive), and Josh Ford (1 Successful TD catch), that’s a 100% success rate on balls caught by Alabama Tight Ends in this game. Whoa! Never thought I’d see the day.
The receivers also had some fun, too, with RCW leading the pack, then suddenly-an-undoubted-starter Rico Scott pulling in a few himself. Noah Rodgers made a splash with his first catch of the season, and Lotzier Brooks obviously broke this whole thing open with his early grab.
Miscellaneous: Lightning round edition
Alabama’s 3rd down defense is back! (Too bad SCar got away with 60% of their numerous 4th down attempts; it would’ve been ugly with even one or two fewer).
The Red Zone was kind to the ’Noles last week, but this week the Tide held a massive advantage here, with a 66% Red Zone SR to the Gamecocks’ absolutely putrid 14% (that’s 1-of-7 plays). Neither team spent particularly long in The Zone, but Alabama made the most of their time inside the 20.
It’s just one game, but the offense did seem to perform a bit better at Medium distances than they have been; it’s been a bit of a soft spot (perhaps due to play calling tendencies, situational predictability, perhaps RPOs, or something else).
Maybe it helps that they didn’t spend a lot of time at middling distances. I mean, without as much of a run game to brag about, they played a lot more downs from >8 yards out, where things usually ended in an incompletion or a big play … I mean, that >20% XR from long distance suggests that they were happy throwing up proverbial long shots in this one. Apparently we have the QB to do it.
And that’s all he wrote. Alabama’s at 4-0 and hopefully savoring this victory before a tough stretch. If we continue showing the kind of versatility we’ve seen the last few weeks, this team would win double-digit games and make some Gumps mighty happy. But, as I said earlier in the week, the Gamecocks are not exactly the class of the SEC, so let’s take this for what it is (and hope for the best against bigger foes).
