Thoughts and observations from the game.
The sun came up this morning, but for the life of me, I don’t know why that’s supposed to be a good thing.
In a perfect world, Trent Richardson’s performance yesterday would have strengthened his Heisman standings. Despite the defense clearly keying on him on every single down, he managed 169 yards from scrimmage, including an impressive 24 yard run that most people will quickly forget because the next play was the Marquis Maze pass gone wrong.
Is there a more overrated player than Tyrann Matthieu? His only real contribution was a dirty play that took a true All-American quality corner — Dre Kirkpatrick — out of the game. There is no arguing that it was just the speed of play or an accident. He got beat, and decided to take the player out. Did he intend to injure Kirkpatrick? Probably not, though I have no idea what he was thinking. Was there anyway he could believe he was making a legitimate football play? No chance. LSU’s secondary is extremely good, but Matthieu is only the fourth best player on it.
Is there a more underrated player than Eric Reid? He made plays all night and all over the field, including the biggest play of the game — stripping the ball from Michael Williams at the goal line.
I’ve heard a lot of people saying that because of the lengths of the kicks, Tide fans shouldn’t fault the kickers. I do agree that those are not gimme kicks that were missed. But the issue isn’t with a missed kick here or there, it’s with missing four kicks, and missing them egregiously. Those kicks never had a chance. They didn’t cut just outside the upright. One didn’t go far enough (and was still wide), one was blocked because it was so low, one was so wide that it had not passed the line of scrimmage before it was obvious it was missed.
Still, Alabama’s defense played arguably better than expected — as did LSU’s — and there is little doubt that these are still the two best teams in college football. Which is of course problematic. Most folks, myself included, don’t believe there should be a rematch. But, as the system dictates, the top two teams in the game should play in the championship. If Oklahoma beats Oklahoma State and Oregon beats Stanford, and we assume everyone believes that the SEC pair are one and two, the issue becomes this: do voters manipulate their ballots to make sure their isn’t a rematch or do we get a rematch which will invalidate the importance of the first matchup? Neither is ideal.
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