Alabama Football: Crimson Tide survive against Texas in road test

Alabama Football beat Texas, 20-19. In a game, where Quinn Ewers got injured and Texas played their backup QB for a majority of the time, this game was close. This was a concerning one for the Tide. The game started off with teams trading scores as we got to 10-10 shortly after the second quarter began.

Alabama Football survives against Texas in road test

The score would stay that way till half as the Tide struggled with penalties and poor offensive line play all game. Speaking of penalties, Will Anderson Jr had a lot of them. Anderson had a couple of them including three offside penalties, which was just poor IQ from the Heisman candidate.

Additionally, he had a personal foul after a late hit on Ja’Tavion Sanders. It seemed like the late hit was a frustrating play by the superstar after a poor game to start. Overall, the Tide had 15 penalties in a game that Nick Saban has to be frustrated with. In a game where Quinn Ewers got injured in the first quarter (and didn’t return), Bama should be able to win handily, not needing a late-game field goal to win.

The Tide got lucky in the third when a potential safety was called an incomplete pass from quarterback Bryce Young. A play that originally got called targeting and roughing the passer by Texas was overturned, leading to Alabama punting the ball.

The scoring then started for Texas on the next possession as they went down the field for a field goal midway through the third quarter. It came after three consecutive three and outs by both teams. Alabama’s offense struggled again to even get a first down and punted the ball back to Texas.

The Longhorns went down the field and scored another field goal. While the team was settling for field goals, it was quite impressive considering QB (who came in after Ewers went down) Hudson Card was hobbling on one leg during offensive snaps.

The Tide finally woke up and went down the field to score a touchdown behind an impressive drive from Young where he used his feet and arm to lead Alabama down the field. After exchanging non-successful drives, Texas went down the field again to score a field goal late in the fourth quarter. Bryce Young had around 1 minute and 30 seconds to go down the field and take the lead.

That is exactly what Young did on that last drive. Young led the Tide down the field and into field goal range. Will Reichard kicked the game-winning field goal to win and the Tide survived. While they got the victory, Alabama has some things to work on.

Alabama needs to work on their offensive line. While the Longhorns only got two sacks all day, they were able to get pressure on Young. The offensive line really struggled in this matchup and turned this game into a competitive one. Obviously, the defense needs to be shored up. The Texas offense was missing Ewers from the end of the first quarter on.

Despite having Heisman candidate, Bijan Robinson, Texas shouldn’t been able to move the ball with their backup QB (who was also injured for parts of this game). As stated before, Alabama had 15 penalties on the day.

The only positive you can take away from an Alabama defense standpoint was that the run defense was pretty solid. Robinson only had 57 yards on 21 carries. That is somewhat okay. Considering the day, the rest of Alabama’s defense, run defense was probably a solid good takeaway from this game. A negative takeaway from this game is that Alabama’s passing defense was poor.

Considering Texas had two freshmen starting on the offensive line, Alabama should have been able to get lots of pressure all day. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Despite being injured, Card had plenty of time to pass and did do a good job all things considered.

Card threw for 158 yards on 14 completions after Ewers went out. In the one quarter Ewers was in, he threw for 134 yards on 9 completions.

This was a game Alabama should have lost and would have probably lost if Ewers was healthy. The Tide better shape up or things will get ugly when they start in conference play. I think the defense will shape up later in the season because those mistakes are fixable. The Tide can probably make sure they don’t get as many flags as they did in this game. Will Anderson will play better in future games.

I am not so sure about the offensive line. I think the offensive line will probably be an issue all year. We shall see in October when Alabama get the harder part of their in-conference schedule.

The Tide gets two more tune-up games (UL Monroe and Vanderbilt; Vanderbilt is better than people thought in the preseason considering their 2-1 record but this is probably seen as a tune-up game for a team like Alabama.) until their schedule gets relativity harder.