Alabama’s rushing attack doesn’t need a miracle in 2026. It needs cleaner football.
That’s the blunt message Ryan Grubb delivered Monday when he laid out the first order of business for the Crimson Tide on the ground: stop losing yards before the play even gets started. For the offensive coordinator, the fix begins with something as basic as it gets - keep the offense moving forward and cut out the negatives.
"I thought one of our biggest sins last year was the number of negative yardage runs that we had," Grubb said Monday. "You know, for us, just the availability of keeping the ball consistently moving forward and eliminating the negative yardage runs is going to be step one. And that's a very low bar."
It’s a low bar, but one Alabama didn’t always clear in 2025. The Tide’s backs were too often meeting defenders in the backfield, even if the official rushing totals were shaped heavily by sack yardage.
In the SEC Championship Game, Alabama was held to minus-3 yards rushing in a blowout loss to Georgia, with quarterback Ty Simpson absorbing 29 yards in rushing losses through sacks. Daniel Hill was the team’s leading rusher in that game with just 11 net yards.
For Grubb, the issue starts with the most basic kind of alignment and communication.
"And I guess what I'm saying there is the communication piece that we're on the same page and we don't have busted A and B gap assignments. And for us, that's going to be priority one," Grubb said.
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