After a 56-23 win at Mississippi State, Alabama offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb still found plenty to clean up before No. 6 Alabama turns to No. 2 Georgia.
That may sound picky after a road performance that produced 49 points against a ranked SEC opponent, but Grubb set the tone Monday by pointing to the details.
“Operationally early on, there were still a few miscues that we just, we got a lot of work to do yet,” Grubb said Monday.
Alabama left Starkville with a convincing victory, but the Crimson Tide did not fully separate right away. Grubb said there were chances to put the Bulldogs away earlier, and one mistake in particular kept the game from getting out of hand sooner.
A fumble by Daniel Hill deep in Alabama territory led to a Mississippi State touchdown and trimmed the margin to 21-14 with 9:09 left in the first half. Grubb called it a rare lapse from Hill and said it was the kind of play Alabama wants to eliminate.
“(The fumble) is super uncharacteristic of him, something I haven’t seen since I’ve been here, not even in practice,” Grubb said. “He’s a big part of what we do, and he’s gonna be just fine.
He’s gonna work hard and get that rectified. But for us, that was just a really uncharacteristic error, really like that for us, from what we’ve done the last couple weeks here, and put our defense in that situation was unfortunate, and then they end up getting points, and kind of get some life back in the game, and we had an opportunity to really kind of squeeze it all out of them, and didn’t do it.
So that part, we’d love to get that fixed.”
Grubb also said Alabama needs cleaner execution on intentional grounding situations and sacks, and he pointed to decision-making as another area for improvement.
“Just better decision making on some of the concepts,” Grubb said. “But as far as the ball moving forward, the running game did a good job. Certainly can be better.”
There was one part of the offense Grubb liked a lot: the ground game. He said Alabama had no negative runs for the first time since he arrived.
“Happy with the guys’ process through the week, really just kind of staying focused on, this is just a game, the standard is the standard,” Grubb said. “You start getting too much up for one game and not as much for the other, it gets to be a slippery slope.
So for a young team, I thought they did a good job with the process of the week. So, was appreciative of the guys that worked there for it.”
Alabama now shifts to a major test at Bryant-Denny Stadium, where the Crimson Tide will host Georgia on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. on ABC.
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