Bama’s defense catapulted the Tide to No. 1

Alabama finally made the jump to No. 1 in this week’s Legends Poll after a steady ascension up the rankings. Former Crimson Tide head coach Gene Stallings and former Auburn head coach Pat Dye answered some questions about the top team in an interview with the Legends Channel.

What makes Alabama’s defense so good?

Stallings: Alabama’s got it all defensively, there’s no question about that.  The thing about their secondary is they can all play man to man, they’re not afraid to blitz, they can really put pressure on the offense.

What about their offense?

Stallings: Offensively they’re struggling a bit, their quarterback hasn’t played a whole lot.  But they’ve got excellent running backs, we’ve said that all along.  Ingram really performed.  Every time he ran the ball it went for 6, 8, 10 yards.  They finally quit throwing the football and gave it to him and he ran for 200+ yards.  They have some more running backs behind him.  They’ve got excellent wide receivers, Jones hadn’t caught a lot of passes but he’s good.  And the quarterback, if he just doesn’t turn the ball over, I think they’re an excellent team.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Stallings: They’ve got a good field goal kicker.  He doesn’t miss hardly anything from 35 yards in, he might struggle a little bit from 50 yards but he’s very accurate.  Punt coverage is good, kickoff return is good.  I ranked them the number one team myself.  I don’t see anyone beating them.

How would they fare against Florida and Texas?

Stallings: I think if they played Florida today they’d beat Florida.  If they played Texas today they’d beat Texas.  I ranked them number one.

What are your thoughts on Alabama?

Dye: First of all Alabama’s not going to be too far behind anybody. Because no one’s going to score many points against them.  I mean if you’re talking about them getting behind by two or three touchdowns, that’s a lot for anybody to overcome, but not many are going to score many points against Alabama.  The Patriots maybe or New Orleans but nobody in college football.  Just like Gene said, they can rush the passer, they play the run.  How many points did South Carolina score on Saturday? 6? How about Ole Miss the week before? 3? You know, they’ve been scoring enough points to win.  So, if you don’t get too far behind, you can catch up running the football.

What do they do best offensively?

Dye: Alabama appears to me to be a football team that can just take control of a football game and just impose their will and make you do what they want to do.  Saturday they struggled throwing the football so they just lined up and ran it up and down the field.  That kid (Ingram) set a record and Alabama’s been running the football a long time.  He set a record for the school, 240 or 250 yards or something and the ones behind him don’t look much different.

What could they improve upon?

Dye: The only thing that I think is average is their offensive line. Probably maybe a little above average.  And they might be a little average at quarterback.  He’s not a Bradford or McCoy but he doesn’t have to be.  All he’s got to be is a good manager.  They’re going to dominate the football game defensively and the offensive line is going to get better as the defense gets tired just like on Saturday.  So at the end of a football game they just take control of it.  They already have control of it defensively and they’ll take control of it offensively because they’re playing against tired defensive folks.  Those running backs, they rest them enough during the course of the game, now that kid got tired Saturday, but they rest them enough to have fresh legs at the end of the game and it makes all the difference.

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