Alabama is back in Nashville on Saturday, and this trip to Vanderbilt comes with a very different feel than the last one. The Crimson Tide heads into an 11:45 a.m. CT kickoff at FirstBank Stadium with a 4-5 Commodores team on the other side, including a 1-5 mark in SEC play, and the game will air on the SEC Network.
The challenge for Alabama starts before the opening snap. Keelon Russell is dealing with an ankle injury he picked up in the win over LSU, and while he returned to that game and helped lead the Tide to victory, he is not expected to start.
ESPN reported Friday that Austin Mack is expected to get the nod, though Russell will be available. That makes the first part of Alabama’s job pretty clear: get the offense rolling early and avoid putting extra pressure on a quarterback making his first career start.
That urgency matters because the Tide has not always come out blazing on offense. Even against LSU, Alabama didn’t really hit full stride until later in the game.
That kind of slow build is a lot easier to survive with a settled quarterback situation. It gets trickier when the offense is breaking in a new starter and trying to avoid a game that turns into a grind.
There’s also the matter of what happened the last time Alabama played here. The 2024 trip to Vanderbilt ended in a 40-35 loss, a result that was heavily documented and one that later helped keep UA out of the College Football Playoff. A loss this time would carry its own consequences, too.
“I think they’re really well coached and play team football,” Kalen DeBoer said on Monday. “So, you gotta take the experience from the past.
You also gotta take what we are and who we are as a football team this year, and this is a different team than we had last year, which is different than the year before, too. So, we gotta take our experiences from what we’re going through right now and apply them, as well.”
On paper, Alabama should have the edge. Vanderbilt’s only SEC win came last week against an injury-depleted Mississippi State team.
But that doesn’t mean the Tide can afford to coast into Saturday expecting the outcome to take care of itself. Clark Lea has shown he can put together a plan that makes life uncomfortable, and Alabama needs to treat this like a game that demands full attention from the start.
The other big piece is the run game, and Ryan Grubb made it clear Monday that it’s a major point of emphasis. He opened his first offensive staff meeting of the week with a blunt message.
“I said, no media-line bullshit, but we gotta focus more on the run game and it’s got to get fixed,” Grubb said Monday. “We had such a good groove happening, and I thought LSU took us out of a couple things that we had early in the football game that, we popped a couple runs early and got behind the sticks, and too many third-and-longs, too many second-and-longs to be able to be out there.
“And that helped put us in a position on third-and-XL that you don’t want to be in, and especially against a pass rush like that. So for us, one of the huge focuses is is how do we get the run game back? And what do we got to do to get the ball in the right people’s hands?”
That issue has been made worse by injuries. Neither EJ Crowell nor AK Dear played against LSU, and Dear has been ruled out.
Crowell is probable. Even so, Alabama needs more from the rest of the backfield and needs it quickly.
If the Tide is going to settle in offensively and avoid turning Saturday into a mess, Vanderbilt is the place to start fixing the ground game.
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Alabamas Seton Hall Win Left One Real Question About This Roster
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Seton Hall made things interesting by clawing back from a 17-point deficit, which is the kind of response that can expose where a team still has work to do even in a win. Alabama handled the closing stretch well enough to finish the job, but the bigger takeaway from a non-conference game like this is whether the improved defense and lineup tinkering can hold up once the schedule gets tougher. [Read more 🡒]
Keelon Russell Opened Up About Playing Through Alabamas Biggest Vanderbilt Concern
Alabamas 21-6 win at Vanderbilt came with a little more uncertainty than the final score suggested, and Keelon Russell was right at the center of it. The quarterback entered the week dealing with an injury that left his status in question, then still managed to get on the field and guide the Crimson Tide to a road victory with 217 yards and three touchdowns.
Russell said he pushed himself throughout the week to be ready, which helps explain why Alabama was able to keep its offense steady despite the concern around his availability. For a team that needed him to answer the bell, the bigger question now is how he comes out of that game and what it means for the next stretch of the schedule. [Read more 🡒]
Alabama Faces A Late-Season CFP Test It Cannot Afford To Blow
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Week 11 brings the kind of pressure-packed setting that can reshape the bracket in a hurry, especially with teams like Notre Dame, Texas, UCLA, Kentucky and Boise State all trying to protect their own positioning. For Alabama, the challenge is less about style points now and more about surviving a late-season test that could determine whether its playoff case stays strong or starts to unravel. [Read more 🡒]