Deciding to go for it or not on fourth down is always an interesting dilemma in the flow of a football game.
The Alabama Crimson Tide were one of the best at it last season in terms of percentage with them converting five of their seven attempts. However, Alabama’s new head coach Kalen DeBoer and Washington went for it on fourth down by more than triple the Tide’s amount last season with them converting 14 of their 22 attempts.
DeBoer offered some insight into how Alabama will make those decisions this season during his Thursday press conference.
“I would say that the mindset is we wanna be aggressive, but we’re not gonna be reckless,” DeBoer said. “That’s what I tell the guys. That’s what I tell the team. We’re gonna play a team game. A team game means that if there’s situations, we really feel are favorable, situations where we feel like we can get it or that we really need to based on the the flow of the game, we’ll go for it. I think last year, there were some right at the end of the season, but if you look at the numbers, it isn’t like we’re that much more. I’d probably say we’re in the middle of pack roughly on how many times we go for it other than the championship game when you’re forced to go for it. I don’t think we’re reckless, but we take those right times and try to take advantage of them and go for it.”
It will be a point of interest under DeBoer to see how fourth down situations are handled.
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