Leading off today, check out this gem of a headline from our favorite AL.com
It’s such a hard hitter of an article it’s even paywalled!
Anyway, the actual article just had some quotes from DC Kane Wommack, and here’s the video:
“When you look at the experience that we have and some of the things we feel like we can put ourselves in the best chance personnel-wise to get the right people on the field at the right time, year two allows you to be able do more things, certainly. There’s some things we will
have geared up and prepared for, not necessarily maybe anything new that we didn’t show last season, just being able to expand off of those packages, is probably the biggest advantage you have in year two than you had in year one.”
Wommack seemed a bit less forthcoming with info in this press conference than he usually is. Still, this final quote from him caught my ear a little. I’ve not been shy about my praise for Wommack’s scheme and the job he did last year. Still, it was a very simple defensive scheme. Which, for a really young defense, I think that was perfect. This year, though? He may be adding some complexity to the defense. It’ll be interesting to see how it looks.
In the scheduling world, Greg Byrne added some comments in light of the announcement of the SEC moving to a 9-game schedule:
Alabama AD Greg Byrne told AL.com in a Monday interview the school “is going to have to look at” those deals considering the ninth SEC game being added to the calendar.
Byrne said they were disappointed to see some major teams cancel Power 4 non-conference games “and then not have any on their schedule.”
“Yeah, we, we may make some adjustments,” Byrne told AL.com, “but we’re, we’re going to continue to have Power 4 non-conference games. Yeah, we think that’s good for college football. We think that’s good for our program, it’s good for our student athletes and it’s good for our fans.”
I know I’m in the minority here, but I long been against going to 9 SEC games – and not because of the fairness of the strength of schedule arguments. I’ve always wanted more cross-conference play to help develop a better set of data for creating opponent-adjusted metrics. When the conferences are playing isolated silo schedules and the only real crossover being increasingly meaningless post season play, then attempts to compare teams on metrics become less accurate.
Speaking of advanced metrics, Bill Connelly posted his first SP+ predictions of the season, and his model has Alabama with a solid 81% win probability and a 14.3 point margin.
Admittedly, S&P+ relies heavily on preseason ratings up until week 6 or so, so always take metrics like this with a grain of salt early on.
It’ll be Simpson who’s on television every Saturday, but Grubb who will be scrutinized most.
The genius when things go well, the goat when they don’t.
That’s what Grubb signed up for when he joined the Alabama staff: the pressure of coaching at a school that has a very limited tolerance for failure. The pressure of arranging the returning quality pieces of a disjointed offense around a new face at quarterback, and getting the whole to yield more production.
Sounds like Ryan Grubb is going to be a booth OC while Nick Sheridan is the guy on the sidelines. With Sheridan having been the former OC last year (can we call him the long-term interim OC?), this could make for a cool dynamic that takes advantage of both the positives of the booth and sideline coaching styles.
In any case, Grubb is going to have a WHOLE lot of eyes on him, as the expectations are sky high within the fanbase that he can turn things around from the multi-year offensive skid that Alabama has experienced.
According to a report from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, former Alabama Crimson Tide wide receiver Amari Cooper is signing with the Las Vegas Raiders as a free agent.
With the signing, Cooper now returns to the Raiders organization, the same franchise that drafted him with the No. 4 overall pick in the 2015 NFL draft out of Alabama, and last played for back in 2018.
A 10-year NFL veteran, Cooper is a five-time Pro Bowl selection who has 711 career receptions for 10,033 yards and 64 touchdowns across his time in the league. Cooper has also seen time with the Oakland Raiders, Dallas Cowboys, Cleveland Browns, and Buffalo Bills, the latter two of which he played with last season, hauling in 44 receptions for 547 yards and four touchdowns.
Congrats to Coop for catching back on with his first team, likely as a pathway to retirement. He’s quietly had a highly productive NFL career, and will break into the top 50 all time with only 500 more yards this season.
Finally, the Seahawks are announcing to the world that they’re making some plays for Jalen Milroe in the main offense:
That might be the most obvious attempt ever at trying to get their future opponents to gameplan for something that probably doesn’t matter too much, but still, we may get the occasional Milroe highlight this season.
