Alabama’s defense has been the subject of some criticism after the showing they had last Saturday at Texas A&M. Johnny Manziel passed for a career high 464 yards and led the Aggies to score 42 points in a losing effort against the Crimson Tide. Despite winning the game, Alabama’s own defensive players know there is major room for improvement. Defensive end Jeoffrey Pagan suggested Alabama’s defense was not satisfied with their performance in the SEC opener for the two-time defending BCS champions.
“That really didn’t sit well with us,” Pagan said in a report by AL.com. “As a defense we take pride in not giving up big plays and things like that. We definitely have to work and try and fix all those mistakes.”
Odds are Alabama will correct a number of their mistakes. If there is one thing that can be learned from watching a Nick Saban team over the years it is that mistakes rarely happen twice on the football field. Needless to say, Saban was not exactly thrilled with the defense either.
“We didn’t do a very good job of running schemes,” Saban said. “I think part of the problem, we played six in the box to stop the run and that really hurt us in the pass. When we played five in the box, we didn’t really stop the run. I thought that Ed (Stinson) and Jeoffrey Pagan did a good job and I thought that the other players made improvement.”
Playing in the Texas heat may have been a cause for some of the lag on defense. Chasing around a player like Manziel and others in the heat in the middle of the afternoon in Texas requires outstanding conditioning. Not that Alabama players were not conditioned well enough, but it can be rough on any defense going up against an offense like Texas A&M’s in that type of environment.
“I do think we ran out of gas a little bit at the end of the game, especially in our ability to rush, which is understandable,” Saban said. “It was a hot day, a lot of guys got IVs at halftime.”