One of the few Teams that has a dedicated Coach for ST and the performance has been bad for each game.
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I’d guess that Sam would not make any type of staff changes until the season is finished and recruits are signed. And we most like have one more game in this crazy 2020 season.
No doubt that special teams have been (overall) poor. I’d give the coach one more year. Firing is not always the answer. IMO
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Big buddies with Sam? I don’t figure he’ll fire him, but if next year is any semblance of this, then you have to cut him loose.
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DD has a very nice, and very nicely timed, article on this subject, I think on thursday or friday. check it out, it’s very illuminating.
GHG
Will be very interested in DD’s article. Special teams play has been beyond bad this year. Yesterday was a classic example. Absolute failure to execute a punt coverage scheme resulted in an easy touchdown for the Tide. That play seemed to suck the life (and any slim hope we had) out of the stadium. There are other easy examples of critical missed assignments and failures to execute – two missed PATs at Mo. and a blocked FG against LSU, that come immediately to mind. It seems like we have taken a big step backward in special teams this year – I didn’t think that was even possible.
Watching LSU’s punter and kicker perform last night (yes, the one that kicked the 57 yard field goal to win it for the Tigers) made it very clear how important special teams are to a team’s success. We have to be at the absolute bottom of the conference in this area…
Why not fired? … Maybe because the head coach knows he didn’t give the special teams coach much talent to work with; and that what talent he DID give dropped off even more during the season (injuries, over-used defensive players, COVID-related issues, etc.).
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With COVID, and everything else going on , I would think he would get one yr
I think he deserves a chance to coach better talent. He had to coach what he had during a very weird season.
Not making excuses for the ST Coach but,
I think there was a revolving door of players on ST this year because of COVID and injuries, etc. How could there not be if we were relegated to starting walkons at critical positions elsewhere.
I think Clay already mentioned only 63 AR players available against Bama for a home game. How many missing personell were on ST I don’t know.
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So, every other team didn’t have COVID issues, that’s a bs excuse. After Smith took it to the house, we then started trying to do directional punting, a little too late. Bama plays a lot of starters on special teams, we play some, but “want to” defines a lot of what happens on punt and kick coverage. As to returns, we did improve on catching the punt and negating lost yardage the past two games, 8 games too late.
Our place kicker was a Groza nominee, so no COVID problems there, just poor execution.
I give him a pass simply because of our limited roster and he has a great kicker coming in next season.
All good pts
We had a guy that hadn’t missed an extra point in forever transfer in too. You never know what you’ll get with a freshman kicker playing in front of 70k.
I didn’t blame it on COVID only.
If it’s about “want to” then don’t blame just the ST Coach. Want to comes from the top.
Bama can afford to play any and all starters on ST because they have quality backups 2-3 deep at every position.
Blocked kicks are all the fault of the kicker.
OK rice - fire the ST Coach stop the bs.
We’re paying him $400k to figure this out. I’ve already said he won’t be fired this year, but
“no excuses” for next year.
You could be the world’s best coach and still lose if your players are not also good.
Pittman said that punt was called to go right to pin Smith near the Alabama sideline. Bauer mishit the ball to the middle of the field.
Did we not try on our first punt? It seemed to go pretty much straight to Smith, too. I set in the NEZ, and it seems he didn’t have to go too far to catch it. Our group called the punt return TD as soon as the punt was in the air, no hang time under it.
I think special teams are where you see depth discrepancies show up most. The teams that recruit more great athletes are going to have better athletes on special teams. Better athletes are harder to catch and harder to shed when they block you. And the teams with more top-line players are less likely to be affected when the roster is cut due to quarantine.
There were some obvious breakdowns in special teams this year, but most of those were corrected. There were two punt blocks in the first three games, but none in the final seven. Kickoffs and kickoff coverage improved. Players were replaced when they struggled. The starting holder, kicker, punter and punt return man were different by the end of the year. There were good coaching decisions made throughout the season that got overlooked when something new went wrong.
Punt coverage had not really been an issue prior to Saturday, and as posted above, the touchdown was a result of a bad kick. Prior to Saturday teams had averaged 7.6 yards per return against Arkansas, and the Razorbacks had only given up one return of more than 10 yards in the previous six games.
I’m not sure if Scott Fountain will work out at Arkansas, but I’m not sure this season should produce a pass or fail grade. He has shown at Georgia and Auburn and Florida State that when the talent is good, his special teams units have been good.
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I don’t know. Pittman only addressed the play call on the touchdown. The call obviously changes from kick to kick, based on the yard line, hashmark, wind, etc.