Alabama Football: 5 post-spring bold predictions for 2019
5. Alabama fields a top-five defense in 2019
Blame Tua Tagovailoa and the offensive struggles against Clemson all you want. Alabama lost the national championship game because the defense showed a consistent inability to stop Trevor Lawrence and the potent Clemson offense throughout the night. It would have taken a near-perfect Tagovailoa performance for the Crimson Tide to have had any shot at winning that game.
The defensive struggles in Santa Clara weren’t anything new. If you go back and watch throughout the season, you’ll see a defense that didn’t have much of an identity and leaned heavily on a dominant presence in the middle in third overall pick Quinnen Williams.
There was little depth to speak of on the defensive line behind the three starters, the linebackers, particularly in the middle, underachieved relative to their talent, and the secondary was young and inexperienced following the departure of its top six contributors from the 2017 squad.
Because of sheer talent and Saban’s defensive acumen, Alabama still finished with the No. 16 overall total defense, and the No. 7 ranked defense according to S&P+. The 16th ranked total defense was the lowest ranking for a Saban-coached Alabama defense since his inaugural season in Tuscaloosa in 2007. It was the first time the team finished outside of the top 10 since 2014, another defensive unit handicapped by a soft middle.
The Tide was still good defensively, but far from great. If you dig further into S&P+, you can see why. While Alabama boasted the top-ranked defense in terms of success rate, it ranked 86th in ISOPPP+, meaning when an opposing offense found a hole, Alabama had a lot of trouble plugging it.
The defensive struggles led to a coaching change on that side of the ball, with Tosh Lupoi joining the Cleveland Browns as the defensive line coach after having his play-calling duties stripped during the season. Pete Golding, who served as the co-defensive coordinator last season and is considered a rising star in the profession, now takes the reins full time.
Some of last year’s issues will be solved simply by maturation. A young secondary was thrown into the fire, but emerged molded by the experience and should take a big step forward even without Deionte Thompson. Trevon Diggs, Patrick Surtain, and Josh Jobe give Alabama the best trio of cornerbacks it has had in years, and Xavier McKinney and Shyheim Carter are a pair of veterans poised for big seasons as well.
In the middle, Dylan Moses slides over to the Mike role left vacated by Mack Wilson’s decision to enter the draft. Moses was the starter at Will last season, and performed well enough to be named a finalist for the Butkus Award. Moses will now have the added responsibility of being the signal caller of the defense. No single player, maybe outside of Tua, is more important to Alabama’s success next season than Moses. If he can be that stud in the middle that the Tide lacked last season, then the defense should be one of the best in the country.
On the line, while replacing Williams won’t be easy, both Raekwon Davis and LaBryan Ray should be a pair of solid bookends, and true freshman D.J. Dale earned rave reviews through spring practice based on his work at nose tackle. There’s several other young players who should be able to contribute early on, helping add depth to a position in dire need of it.
On the edge, the return from injuries of Terrell Lewis and Christopher Allen should bolster a pass rush that already looked solid with the return of Anfernee Jennings and the budding stardom of Eyabi Anoma. The inconsistencies of the pass rush was a big reason for the struggles against Clemson as Lawrence had all day to pick apart the green secondary.
Look for this unit to take a big step forward next season, with Alabama returning to its usual dominance on that side of the football.