Film Review: Alabama

Battered and Behind

Well it finally happened.

After mostly covering up the issue, LSU has been exposed for entering the season without a plan on the interior of the defensive line. The offense was a disaster, but the story of the game was the mismatch in the trenches that allowed Alabama to bully their way to 311 yards and six touchdowns on the ground.

With the abundance of NFL talent available at the DT position this past offseason, LSU’s current situation, which has now arguably cost them two games in a row, is a grim referendum on LSU’s ability to compete with its supposed peers in the stacking of talent. LSU has swung a small stick on the free-agent market and has punted another season because of it. It’s not the only thing that went wrong, far from it, but LSU’s run defense Saturday was a manifestation of the biggest question regarding LSU’s place in college football.

With teams like Oregon, Ohio State, Texas, and Alabama recruiting the High School ranks at an equal or superior level to LSU, how can they compete when a select handful of impact starters are thrown on top of that baseline while LSU’s needs go unmet or are gestured at with the acquisition of assets in decline? Every once in a while you dig out a Jayden Daniels or Bradyn Swinson, but you mostly miss on guys while the teams that prioritize proven production tend not to. Roster-building is the most important element of running a program, and LSU’s reality of having to enter the season with weaknesses raises existential concerns about its ability to build the arsenal it needs to consistently compete at the top of the sport.

Nowhere on the roster was this issue more publicized than the interior DL. LSU lost both Maason Smith and Mekhi Wingo to the draft after last season, which while a touch surprising, was not particularly difficult to foresee. With no youth immediately ready to step in, people grew pretty concerned about the state of the interior. LSU mostly sat out the first window of the portal, especially on defense, as staff changes came later than they should have. By the opening of the spring window, the Tigers were desperate. LSU was involved in discussions with impact players like Michigan State’s Simeon Barrow (5.5 sacks so far for Miami) and TCU’s Damonic Williams (a dominant run-stuffer for Oklahoma) but came up empty.

Due to the completely expected scarcity in the spring market, these players commanded price tags that LSU apparently could not compete with. In addition to the pair they contacted, former Michigan State DT Derrick Harmon (Oregon), who is now a potential first-team All-American and high draft pick, became available during the spring. When asked point-blank about how their efforts to fill the need were going, Brian Kelly was candid.

The above is a false dichotomy, but that’s enough of the armchair GM routine, let’s take a look at how that’s going.

Hydrogen Bomb vs Coughing Baby

Alabama’s interior offensive line is arguably the centerpiece of the team. Going into this year, the Tide retained from a punishing run game both starting guards in LG Tyler Booker and RG Jaeden Roberts, both of whom are gargantuan NFL-caliber players. On top of that vaunted duo, Kalen DeBoer ferried center Parker Brailsford, one of the best middlemen in the country, over from Washington. The result is a trio that is hard to line up against without strength at IDL across from them.

Alabama made sure to put the ball in the hands of their most dangerous ballcarrier, Jalen Milroe. They got creative with it, on several occasions running QB Duo scheme with the RB as a bonus blocker to lead. Because LSU is short a body in the box here and using one of the LBs on a blitz, they need Whit Weeks to “fit the ball,” which just means tracking the ballcarrier. As a result, he leaves the A-gap which is his primary gap. The NT and DT inside are relied upon to penetrate and collapse the interior but watch what happens to them.

The same Q Duo H-Lead play hits again. The ease with which the 3-Technique gets dumped on this double by the Playside Tackle (74 Kadyn Proctor, another high draft pick) allows him to climb free to Weeks, which hangs the gifted LB out to dry and prevents him from effectively getting in position to tackle someone like Milroe in space (though to his credit he again defeats the block).

Blake Baker, as he has done all season, did everything he could to cover it up with pressures and movements along the front. Manufactured disruption has taken LSU a long way, but the Alabama OL is too good and well-coached to succumb to gadgetry. On a simple zone-read, Brailsford picks up the slant and throws Ahmad Breaux out of the A-gap. Whit Weeks again sees this and gets over to clean it up, but it’s a big gain.

Nowhere is LSU’s failure more evident than what happened to Paris Shand on Saturday. Despite a brutal night, he deserves no criticism. While Shand is a good football player, he is not a Defensive Tackle. Listed at 6’4, 275, he is about 20 pounds underweight for his position, and that’s after LSU beefed him up a bit to move him inside. Moving players out of position is the kind of triage move you make when struck with an unexpected roster emergency such as an injury, dismissal, and so forth. LSU went into the season with Shand as a starter inside and while he has frankly done an incredible job this year given the circumstances, he had no chance against real interior blockers. He deserves a lot of credit for what he’s given LSU this year and it’s a shame that he got set up like this.

A Fork in the Road

The reader should not take this as a condemnation of LSU’s defensive staff, or even necessarily Brian Kelly. Blake Baker, Bo Davis, Kevin Peoples, and Corey Raymond have done an amazing job with what they were given, and I find it hard to believe that Kelly, who left Notre Dame in large part due to limitations on talent acquisition with an emphasis on doing things the “right way,” suddenly wants to turn Baton Rouge into Further-South Bend.

The problem feels bigger and harder to define. We’ve seen with schools at every tier of the sport what administration can do for talent acquisition. Whether it be a program as big as Oregon with an eye on the national title, a program like Indiana that has exposed “time to rebuild” as an increasingly lame excuse, or even a program like UConn, a former doormat, that has jumped out to an astonishing 7-3 record by weaponizing a big brand to grossly outstrip its former peers at the bottom of the FBS financially, modern approaches build competitive rosters.

LSU doesn’t want to be Ole Miss or Florida State, who prop up unsteady foundations with top-heavy rosters of mercenaries, but to consistently compete with the Texas, Oregon, Ohio State, and Alabamas of the world, they cannot let a pool of instant-impact pieces pass them by and stack the rosters of their competition. With proven stars like Jamaree Caldwell, Walter Nolen, Derrick Harmon, and LT Overton dominating for teams in the playoff picture, it’s hard to stomach LSU falling by the wayside as 311 rushing yards get hung on its head. This defense could have been pretty special. Blake Baker, Bo Davis, Kevin Peoples, and Corey Raymond have done an amazing job with what they were given, but they were not given enough for LSU to seriously style itself a heavyweight. Scott Woodward, Brian Kelly, and all involved have quite the question to answer this winter: Who are the LSU Tigers in this brave new world?