Alabama’s pass protection has been a major issue for the Crimson Tide offense and is poised for another difficult matchup against Tennessee this Saturday.
The Volunteers enter with the third-highest team sack total in the country while the Crimson Tide has allowed a whopping 31 sacks through six games.
The line has underperformed as a group but the major concern or competition still moving forward is at left tackle for Alabama. True freshman Kadyn Proctor and redshirt freshman Elijah Pritchett are both competing for the job as Proctor starts all games with Pritchett rotating in.
To this point, neither has truly separated themselves and has struggled throughout with Proctor allowing seven sacks and 19 pressures and Pritchett giving up three sacks and four pressures in his smaller sample size.
A possible solution was brought up to head coach Nick Saban during his press conference on Monday as he was asked why the Crimson Tide haven’t shifted JC Latham to left tackle.
Latham has been the team’s most reliable lineman this season as he’s allowed just one sack and five pressures on the year and is the team’s highest-graded lineman according to Pro Football Focus.
But the solution isn’t that simple to Saban who explained why he has kept Latham from shifting over to protect Jalen Milroe’s blindside.
“Well, he’s really a good right tackle,” Saban said. “he’s played really well, obviously, being SEC offensive lineman of the week. He had a really good game in the last game. He’s big, strong, physical. he’s the prototype right tackle that everybody would look for in terms of having a power guy who is effective in being able to pass block well enough.
“I guess you always hope that if we move the right tackle to left tackle, that would make everything better. But I guess the question you also have to ask yourself is would that make us any better at right tackle? Or do you just try to attack the solution of trying to get the left tackle to play to the standard that you need him to play, without making multiple changes to the offensive line?
“We can have a debate about that. Nobody really knows the answer to that. But we have made a commitment to try to keep some ability with the guys where they’re playing, and get the guys to play left tackle better.”
Since Latham will be kept in place, Saban was later asked if the sack total was concerning to him.
“I would say hell yeah,” Saban said.
But to Saban, the struggles aren’t for a lack of physical ability with the group as he believes many of the issues are fixable and simply come down to execution.
“These are not all capability issues,” Saban said. “Some of them are things that we could fix. When we’re sliding out, to block three on three, and the guy doesn’t slide out to block the third guy and he runs in to sack the quarterback, that’s a mental error. That’s not a physical problem.
“It’s a combination of all those things that need to get cleaned up with better communication, better execution, and maybe the more knowledge and experience we’ll get, the more we’ll be able to be more effective and consistent in those areas.”
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