From an “SEC assistant” via Tom Dienhart about Alabama’s “unsound” secondary (h/t Orson):
SECONDARY: Their weakness might be their secondary. They lost some guys who were chemistry guys in the back end. Schematically, they do a lot of different things. They do some things I couldn’t get away with because I don’t have some of the players who can just make plays. They do some things like Florida where you go, ‘Holy cow, that’s not very sound.’ But it ends up in a 2-yard loss.
Setting aside the fact that a large portion of this is meaningless, the takeaway point appears to be that the scheme is unsound and/or undisciplined but Saban just “has the players” to make it work. Uh, what? (Let’s leave aside the Lane Kiffin inflammatory analysis of the SEC Championship game that Florida has better players while Alabama has better coaches.) I simply do not agree. I’ve seen Alabama play a lot, and “unsound” is not the word I’d use. Aggressive? Sure. Do they play a lot of man coverage, which takes talent to be able to use? Yes. But unsound implies that they just make things up. I don’t know who the SEC assistant is, or if it got lost in translation to Dienhart, or what, but this just strikes me as an unbelievable form of analysis.
But, if you don’t believe me, you be the judge. The film isn’t from this year, but if they’re unsound, what should it matter? (H/t Brophy for the clips.)