With all eyes on Tuscaloosa, the top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide completely demolished Penn State in a renewal of one of the most interesting and historic series in college football. The postponement of the home-and-home series from the 2004/2005 seasons to 2010/2011 set Joe Paterno and the Nittany Lions up to visit Tuscaloosa in the midst of an Alabama football renaissance, and the Tide smothered PSU from beginning to end.
My Seven Points on Game Two:
1. Trent Richardson is more than able to carry the load while Ingram recovers. Mark Ingram's knee injury kept him out of the game for the second straight week, but Trent Richardson made sure that he was hardly missed. Penn State had not allowed a 100-yard rusher in 17 games until Richardson slashed the Lions defense for 102 in the first half. He finished with 144 yards rushing on 22 carries and a touchdown, and caught an additional 4 passes for 46 yards. Much was made over the last few days of Richardson's freakish strength, and of course, there was the Sports Illustrated cover as well. The bottom line is, Trent is an amazing running back in his own right, and he and Ingram are arguably the top two backs in the country.
2. When you're good, "jinxes" don't matter. ESPN's Gameday visited Tuscaloosa for the sixth time today. Alabama was 0-5 coming in to the game tonight with GameDay on campus. Sports Illustrated featured Trent Richardson on the cover this week. The SI "cover jinx" is legendary. Fortunately, silly superstitions do not dress out for football games. Both "jinxes" quietly died in light of a decisive performance by Alabama and Richardson tonight.
3. At this point in his career, McElroy confidently executes the offense. While he wasn't perfect, McElroy turned in a workmanlike performance, completing 16 of 24 passes for 229 yards and 2 TD. McElroy has matured into a field general, managing the offense, making good decisions, hitting receivers in impossibly tight coverage, and just generally looking every bit the undefeated senior quarterback. We don't expect to see a mid-season slump from the Rhodes Scholar candidate this year like we did in 2009.
4. Special teams performed well, although not perfectly. Cade Foster did miss a long field goal, and a few Penn State kick returns gained more yardage than strictly necessary. Cody Mandell continued to impress with solid punting, averaging 37 yards on three punts. Overall, far from being the weak link that some expected, the special teams contributed solidly to the Alabama win.
5. Youth in the secondary was exposed a little bit tonight, relatively speaking. There were a few blown coverages. Lowery and Lester were out of position a couple of times, and there were some missed tackles and dropped interceptions. On the other hand, the Penn State quarterbacks combined for 14 of 31 passing with 156 yards and 3 interceptions, so the "problems" that we saw ended up being a lot less problematic in light of the results. Forcing turnovers is critical for any defense, and one of the differences tonight was that Alabama forced turnovers nearly every time the Nittany Lions were in the red zone.
6. Give me SEC officials any day. Rogers Redding and the Southeastern Conference officiating crews have taken a lot of hits over the the past couple of years. In fairness, some of it is deserved, and some is sour grapes. The Big Ten officials tonight, however, made several puzzling calls - none more so than the decision to give Penn State the ball back on an admittedly bizarre play. The Lions fumbled the ball in the red zone, Alabama cornerback Robert Lester picked it up and ran it nearly to the opposite end zone before having the ball ripped loose. Then Bama's Dre Kirkpatrick fell on the ball and had it punched out again while rolling on the ground. How Kirkpatrick was not ruled down, even after the replay, was unclear. In addition, the officials seemed to spot the ball a yard short every time Alabama hit the ground. We didn't notice poor spotting on the other side of the ball, however. All in all, it made us glad that we'll be done with Big Ten officials for the foreseeable future.
7. Everybody's talking about separation. In the last two years, the talk around the country has been about how Alabama and Florida had separated themselves from the rest of the SEC. After two weeks of football, it may be fair to say that the top two teams in the country, Alabama and Ohio State, have separated themselves from the rest of the nation. The Buckeyes looked strong while dispatching the Miami Hurricanes 36-24, and both the Tide and OSU should be favored in every game they both have the rest of the year. It's too early to book a trip to Glendale, Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl, but we wouldn't rule it out for either team.
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