In the aftermath of Alabama’s disappointing last-second loss to the Tennessee Volunteers on Saturday night, question marks surrounding the Tide’s performance immediately came to light.
The school-record 17 penalties obviously have received a lot of scrutiny over the last couple of days, but the miscues on special teams and the explosive plays allowed on defense all deserve their fair share of dissection.
Star linebacker [autotag]Will Anderson[/autotag] may have explained the root cause of all the issues on Monday when he spoke to the media. Anderson would speak about the emotion of the team after the loss and pointed to anxiety pre-kick as the possible factor.
Anderson would explain, “I think we probably just had a lot of anxiety. We didn’t have the same intensity that we had a couple of weeks ago. We most definitely needed that to carry over to this game. But that intensity was just not where it needed to be. Probably just had a little anxiety for a big road game.”
It is a rare occurrence for an Alabama player to be so open and honest about the disposition of the team before or during a contest.
Alabama will have to quickly recover emotionally as they prepare for an SEC West matchup with Mississippi State this weekend.
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