Alabama travels to Starkville, Mississippi on Saturday to take on the Mississippi State Bulldogs.
With Alabama’s loss last Saturday against LSU, Alabama not only needs to win Alabama if they want a shot at being back in the College Football Playoff, they also have to win big. With the Tide taking on the Bulldogs in Starkville, Alabama could use a big win on their resume. The Crimson Tide has won every single matchup since 2007, and if Alabama uses last week’s loss as motivation, this could be a big game for the Tide.
What does Mississippi State have to do to win?
Offensively, the Bulldogs will need to be absolutely flawless if they want any chance of winning the game. Although the Bulldogs have RB Kylin Hill who leads the SEC in rushing with 1,027 yards, the Bulldogs have been inconsistent on offense. Don’t be surprised if you see both Tommy Stevens and Garrett Shrader in at quarterback for the Bulldogs. If Mississippi State can not only have big plays on the ground, but also have consistent efforts by the quarterbacks, Mississippi State could find themselves in the end zone.
Defensively, the Bulldogs have to shut down the running game. If the Bulldog defense can stop Najee Harris who rushed for over 140 yard against LSU last Saturday, this game could get interesting. Mac Jones will more than likely be the starting quarterback on Saturday to give Tua Tagovailoa time to heal. If the Bulldogs can put consistent pressure on Jones and cause turnovers, Mississippi State has a good chance to put on a show in Starkville.
What does Alabama have to do to win?
Alabama has to show up, and show out. After last Saturday’s loss against LSU, Alabama needs a big road win over the Bulldogs. Offensively, Alabama needs to be smart and consistent. If Mac Jones starts as quarterback, you could see a similar game plan like the Tide had against Arkansas where the Tide settled into a running game and Jones threw big passes when needed. The Tide doesn’t need to be fancy, just smart and dominant.
Defensively, Alabama needs to shut down the Bulldogs’ running game as well. If Alabama can contain Kylin Hill, who leads the SEC in rushing, and make Mississippi State rely on their inconsistent passing game, Alabama could dominant this game on both sides of the ball.
Who do I think will win this game?
Alabama. Although this is an early morning road game, Alabama will be fired up and motivated from their loss last week against LSU. This game matter more than people realize. Not only does Alabama need to win, they need an impressive road win to convince the CFB Playoff committee they are a team worth a second chance.
Score prediction: Alabama 45, Mississippi State 17
The Alabama Crimson Tide is searching for its twelfth- straight victory over the Mississippi State Bulldogs on Saturday.
The Alabama Crimson Tide (8-1) is searching for its twelfth- straight victory over the Mississippi State Bulldogs (4-5), as the Tide travels to Starkville on Saturday.
Alabama is looking for a big win over the Bulldogs to increase their chance of sneaking back into the top four of the College Football Playoff Rankings after losing a heartbreaking loss to LSU last Saturday, 46-41.
Mississippi State is coming off a big win over the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday, 54-24, which was just their second conference win of the season.
The Crimson Tide is opening up as a 17.5 point favorite over the Bulldogs. Below is how you can watch or listen to Saturday’s matchup:
When: Saturday Nov. 16 at 11:00 p.m. CT
Where: Davis Wade Stadium (Starkville, Miss.)
TV: ESPN
Announcers: Steve Levy, Brian Griese, Todd McShay, Molly McGrath
Former Alabama linebacker Mack Wilson took to Twitter in order to celebrate the Cleveland Browns’ win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, and NFL fans are not too happy about it. In a game where the biggest highlight was Myles Garrett hitting Steelers …
Former Alabama linebacker Mack Wilson took to Twitter in order to celebrate the Cleveland Browns’ win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, and NFL fans are not too happy about it.
In a game where the biggest highlight was Myles Garrett hitting Steelers quarterback Mason Rudolph in the head with his own helmet, tensions were high.
Wilson tweeted out a photo of him standing next to Steelers wide receiver Juju Smith-Schuster, who was laying on the ground in pain – Smith-Schuster would not return to the game after later being placed in concussion protocol.
Photo credit: @HeartofNFL on Twitter
Shortly after receiving some backlash, Wilson deleted the tweet and issues this apology:
We just trying to earn our respect in this league. It’s never our intentions to hurt anyone.
Of course, the NFL season hasn’t ended yet, but the first round of the draft is starting to take shape, so we might as well speculate.
With the 24th pick, the Vikings take safety Xavier McKinney out of Alabama.
At this point in the draft process, it’s probably smarter to take a look at what position draft experts have the Vikings taking than the actual player.
The Vikings have their two starters at safety with Harrison Smith and Anthony Harris, but is an unrestricted free agent after the year.
Minnesota drafted Marcus Epps in the sixth-round of the 2019 NFL Draft, but released him last week to make room for Andrew Sendejo.
McKinney has 43 tackles, two sacks and an interception as a junior.
Tua Tagovailoa will go down as one of — if not — the greatest quarterbacks in Alabama history.
By this point, it is universally accepted that Tua Tagovailoa is one of the best quarterbacks in Alabama history. In fact, it would be hard to argue against the notion that the Honolulu (Haw.) native deserves to sit atop the list.
One statistic, which was pointed out by the SEC Network’s Twitter account on Friday, helps validate that argument:
It has been quite awhile since the Crimson Tide has fielded a successful quarterback in the NFL, but think about all the names at that position in program history: Bart Starr, Joe Namath, Ken Stabler, AJ McCarron … the list could go on.
Yet, Tagovailoa has found more success through the air, at least when it comes to 400-yard passing games, this season than every other Alabama starting quarterback in history.
On the season, the junior passer has completed 70.9 percent of his passes for 2,584 yards and 31 touchdowns — while only tossing three interceptions.
Tagovailoa has done all this despite missing a game against Arkansas that would’ve certainly helped pad those stats (Mac Jones completed 81.8 percent of his passes for 235 yards and three touchdowns against the Razorbacks).
The team’s first loss of the season to LSU on Saturday probably still lingers in the minds of Alabama fans, but make sure to take a step back and appreciate the greatness that is Tua Tagovailoa.
Alabama head coach Nick Saban isn’t worried about Playoff rankings. He’s only worried about controlling what his team can control!
Nick Saban has built the Alabama football program by focusing on the things that you can control.
At this point in the season, the head coach isn’t worried about where his team stands in the College Football Playoff rankings, and he made that much clear during his weekly “Hey Coach” show on Thursday night.
“I don’t want our players to be talking about or hearing about like what everybody else is talking about — my daughter and everybody else — it’s all I hear about: are we going to get into the Playoff? Why did Georgia get ahead of us? I don’t really care about that, alright. Because the only thing we have to do is focus on what do we have to do to finish the season.”
The Alabama head coach then went on to talk about how special it is that every team since 2010 has suffered one or less losses during the regular season, which is a fantastic point.
Right now, the team needs to be worried about controlling the things that are in its control, one of which is beating Mississippi State in Starkville on Saturday morning.
NFL Freaks of the Week is a weekly poll on the Alabama football twitter account
The “NFL Freaks of the Week” is a weekly poll on the Alabama football twitter account, that lets fans vote for an NFL offensive and defensive freak of the week from the previous week’s matchups.
Last week, Josh Jacobs and Minkah Fitzpatrick were the Freaks of the week.
Let’s see who the fans voted for this week!
Offensively, these were the four candidates twitter got to vote on:
Junior golfers signed their National Letters of Intent earlier this week and there were some clear winners across the country.
The pens have been put to paper and college golf’s Class of 2020 is officially starting to take shape.
Junior golfers around the country were finally able to sign and send their National Letters of Intent to the school of their choice on Wednesday, taking the next step in their careers as student-athletes.
After taking some time to break down and analyze both the men’s and women’s signings, there was a clear winner to the day and plenty of other storylines to follow before the players get to campus next fall.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better class in 2020 than the group Cardinal coach Conrad Ray recruited to The Farm. Stanford signed three of the top 10 players in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings for 2020: No. 2 Karl Vilips, No. 6 Jake Beber-Frankel and No. 9 Michael Thorbjornsen.
“Depth is the name of the game,” Ray said of his team. “The lineup is wide open with those three guys, I think all three can come in and play right away based off what they’ve done, but you never know until they get on campus.”
Jake Beber-Frankel shakes hands with a spectator after the second round of the 2019 Boys Junior PGA Championship. (Photo: Hailey Garrett/PGA of America)
Ray called Vilips an “alpha dog” and said Thorbjornsen has “those days where you’re just like ‘holy mackerel this guy’s a freak.’” Beber-Frankel is “every bit as talented” as the others, but plays with panache and flair that pairs well with his impressive hair.
Ray didn’t want to make comparisons to other 2020 recruiting classes, but he did say 2020 is the best class the Cardinal have had in quite some time.
Florida men get better with youth
Head coach JC Deacon has something special cooking down in Gainesville. While starting an underclassmen-heavy lineup, his young Gators have instantly made an impact as the freshman trio of Ricky Castillo, Quentin Debove and John DuBois currently rank Nos. 2-4 on the team in scoring average.
Deacon tapped into the Florida’s rich junior golf market (and England’s), signing Ryan Hart, Jonah Leach, Tyler Wilkes and Joe Pagdin to further bolster his already-young and impressive squad. Expect the Gators to be national title contenders in the coming years.
The creation of this 2020 recruiting class started almost 5 years ago. To see it come together with these 4 absolute studs is a dream come true. @GatorsGolf is in the most capable hands. Lets get to work boys!! 🐊🐊 https://t.co/wDacOD2QAD
It’s no surprise that the Stanford women also had a strong signing day, inking commitments from two players in Golfweek’s top 10 among the class of 2020: No. 6 Rachel Heck and No. 8 Sadie Englemann.
If only they could play this spring.
Senior Albane Valenzuela, ranked No. 2 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, opted to leave the program last week in order to live out her LPGA and Olympic dreams after earning status for the 2020 season at the recent Q-Series. Valenzuela tied for sixth, while teammate Andrea Lee, No. 3 in the WAGR, also earned status by finishing T-30. Lee has yet to announce her decision.
Ohio State men lock down a local
There’s something to be said for keeping your best in-state talent in state. A cold climate doesn’t make that an easy sell for Ohio State head coach Jay Moseley, and who could blame a kid for wanting to head south?
But Moseley, in his fourth season leading the Buckeye men, has not only been able to keep Ohio’s best talent, but cultivate it. That continues with recent signee Maxwell Moldovan.
When he arrives next year, Moldovan, of Uniontown, Ohio, will help fill a void left by recent graduates – and Ohio natives – Will Grimmer, a two-time U.S. Open qualifier, and Daniel Wetterich, runner-up at the Western Amateur and now a Korn Ferry Tour card holder. Grimmer arrived in Columbus the same year as Moseley and Wetterich transferred in from Xavier a year later. (This season’s roster, by the way, includes freshman Jackson Chandler, who shared the 2018 Ohio State High School title with Moldovan.)
Not since 1993 has Ohio State signed one of those, but it’s not the kind of talent you can let slip away.
Alabama gets a double reload
No program experienced a professional exodus quite like Alabama did at the end of last fall. The women lost Kristen Gillman and Lauren Stephenson after the LPGA Q-Series in October and Davis Riley decided to turn professional after Thanksgiving.
Neither Alabama team advanced to the NCAA Championship in May, and the men failed to crack the top 50 in the rankings this fall. An infusion is coming with the class of 2020, though.
If it seems like Canon Claycomb was everywhere on Wednesday, it’s probably because he was. Claycomb, who checked in not just at the top of his class but at the top of Golfweek’s Junior Rankings, garnered nearly 700 Twitter “likes” for signing his NLI and later made a cameo on Golf Channel.
Signing day is upon us and I’m so blessed to finally be able to say I’m signed to go to The University of Alabama. Thank you to everyone who has helped me get to this point and thanks to those who have cheered me on. ROLL TIDE. 💯 #270 pic.twitter.com/VWgfw8ty7n
Claycomb, who lives in Orlando, Florida, brings every experience from practicing with PGA Tour players on the Lake Nona range to playing the Junior Ryder Cup to sharing an instructor with Justin Thomas (and sometimes texting JT with questions).
For the women, head coach Mic Potter kept things familiar, securing signatures from four-time Alabama Girls’ Junior winner Michaela Morard as well as Italian Benedetta Moresco, whose older sister Angelica is currently a junior for the Tide.
Both women were chosen to represent their respective sides in the Junior Solheim Cup, and interestingly, walked into the opening ceremonies side-by-side.
Let’s start to look at the resumes of the 15 teams still alive in the Playoff discussion. Who deserves to be ranked higher or lower?
Welcome to the Bubble Watch. If you’ve been reading through my Eliminator articles, you’d know that I still count 15 teams with a shot at reaching the College Football Playoff. (And if you haven’t been reading them, please feel free to go back to them.)
Now that teams have played enough games, we can get a real look at every team’s resume. So, for the 15 teams still alive, I am going to present all of the resumes to you. We’re going to look at every resume so that we can compare what positives and negatives each team has. It’s the easiest and best way to understand what each team is bringing to the table in the College Football Playoff discussion.
How this works
Let’s go over what I’m looking at and why.
Quality of wins
For the purposes of determining quality wins, things like Top 10 and Top 25 are arbitrary numbers that do more harm than good. There is no reason the gap between No. 25 and No. 26 is considered significantly larger than the gap between No. 24 and No. 25. Therefore, to counteract this, I am being very lenient as to who is considered Top 10 or Top 25. Any team in the Top 25 of one of the major polls (CFP, AP, or Amway Coaches), or in a significant number of the accepted computer rankings, will be considered in the Top 25 for resume purposes. This leads to the awkwardness of having more than 25 “Top 25″ teams, but it presents a more accurate picture of the overall resume. Moreover, it just makes sense. The committee is aware of who is a good team and what counts as a win of decent quality, even if that team didn’t quite make it into the rankings.
I also split up every game each team has played into different groups. The groupings are important. First of all, I focus on Top 10 and Top 25 wins. These are, obviously, the quality wins. Next, I’m looking for teams in the Top 40. These are solid wins and deserve respect. The next group is teams somewhere between 41st and 80th in FBS. These are mediocre teams–they are games that any Playoff contender should win, but could in theory lose on an off day. Everyone outside the Top 80 is a complete cupcake game, and should be valued as a negative. To determine where each team is and who is outside the Top 80, I use a collection of computer rankings that focus on different things (e.g. Sagarin and Anderson) to get broad perspectives on who is a cupcake and who isn’t.
The selection committee has consistently mentioned “wins over teams with winning records” as an important metric over the past few years, so I’m going to show that to you. It is a less detailed way to view a win than looking at where each win is ranked, but the committee seems to care about it so we have to. I will not count a win over an FCS team as a +.500 win, regardless of record. Again, even though the metric is a stupid one–there are cupcakes with +.500 records (for example, Buffalo or Western Kentucky)–the committee cares about it, so we have to as well.
Offensive and defensive performance
I include the rankings in yards per play of each team. On one hand, the resume focuses on which teams you have beaten, so I stick to only identifying the quality of wins and losses and show you each contender’s remaining games. On the other hand, the committee “watches teams play,” which is really not a quantifiable statistic, but something that we can at least try to get a bearing on. Still, it’s hard to find an offensive or defensive metric that accurately represents all teams and styles of play.
Some metrics will over-value “air raid” type offenses while some will prefer more consistent, but less explosive, gameplans. The rank in offensive and defensive yards per play gives a basic metric of how efficient and/or consistent a team is on both sides of the ball.
SOS range
The SOS range is taken from numerous computer rankings. Ranges can be quite large, especially as different rankings favor different things. They do, however, give a decent picture of the possibilities of how strong the schedule actually is. Keep in mind, it’s still a little early in the season, so the different SOS methodologies could bring up radically different results. Ranges could still be wide in some cases, but in general they should narrow over the next few weeks.
In this episode, Lamb sits down with Brett Hudson break down Alabama’s first loss of the 2019 season to LSU.
Cecil Hurt and Clint Lamb, through TideSports.com and The Tuscaloosa News, produce a podcast called “The ‘Bama Beat”, which features all the latest news and analysis surrounding the Alabama Crimson Tide.
In this episode, Lamb sits down with TideSports.com beat writer Brett Hudson break down Alabama’s first loss of the 2019 season, which came against conference rival LSU.
Prior to getting into that, the two break down where things stand with the College Football Playoff rankings and where they believe the Crimson Tide currently sits.
