After Alabama’s offense sputtered to just 10 points, Kalen DeBoer made it clear Monday that he isn’t pinning the problems on Ryan Grubb.
“I think he’s a great play caller,” DeBoer said. “Putting an offense together, understanding tendencies and things like that, I think you’ve got to look at, there’s a lot of scenarios that go into struggling at times as an offense.
Again it comes down to execution in a lot of those moments. Our fourth-and-1 calls, I think they’re really good calls.
They were calls we were ready to run in that game. Our guys knew, there are details of stepping on top of each other and things like that that matter.
The thing about Ryan is that he’s evaluating and is as critical of himself as anyone. It’s always been like that.
It goes back 15 years at least. 20 years that I’ve known him.”
The numbers from the loss painted the same picture. Alabama finished with only 201 yards of offense, reached Tennessee territory just three times and came away with points on only one of those trips, when Conor Talty kicked a field goal. Seven of the Tide’s 10 points came after the defense set up short field position with an interception.
The Crimson Tide also struggled badly on third down, going 2-for-13 with Grubb directing the offense.
Still, DeBoer kept circling back to the same point when asked about the play calling: “everything comes down to execution.”
“You’re trying to find the things you can execute well,” DeBoer said. “I think a lot of our calls are base calls and things we run that we’ve had success with.
You’ve got to stack them on top of each other. When you’re in third and extra longs like we had a number of times early in the game, you just want to not make a bad situation worse.
A lot of it has to do with just being on the same page and having your guys execute. Check it down.
Get some positive yards. It’s OK to punt the football once in a while.
A lot of that kind of stuff. Play team football.
I think those intentions were certainly there.”
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