The Alabama Crimson Tide defeated the ECU Pirates during the first regular season contest of the year on Saturday afternoon.
Alabama’s offensive unit as a whole played at a high level throughout the majority of the contest. Sophomore quarterback Keelon Russell shined in his debut as the Crimson Tide’s starter, but the unit as a whole found themselves struggling to get things going throughout the majority of the third quarter.
Alabama offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb took a moment to comment on the Tide’s third quarter woes against ECU, as Grubb claims the unit will undoubtedly need to play with more intensity in the second half moving forward.
“The third quarter was super disappointing.” Grubb said. “We came out flat, guys weren’t ready to play. Gonna challenge them with that, and they’ll take it and they know that they got to be better. That was the part where with a young offense and these guys just knowing, Ryan Williams comes out there and he’s ready to play. He knows the deal, he knows what it’s like to come out of the locker room, and that stuff can’t happen. You’re not going to play with a three or our touchdown lead every week. The missed opportunities in the third quarter in a different game scenario would be much more costly, so just want to get a lot of stuff cleaned up. For our guys, the pre snap penalties, I thought we rushed the ball okay, we certainly can improve on that. I thought the one big hit to TB that got called back really could have been an explosive play that really sent us kind of through the roof on that one, I think it was 60+ yards. So that’s the one we really wanted to uncork the whole game, it was unfortunate to get that called back and I thought it was blocked very well. I thought the guys did exactly what they were coached to do, but otherwise Keelon played tough, made some off schedule plays that I was super proud of him about. The guy is obsessed with getting better, I’m proud of him for that and he will keep working.”
Alabama’s offense was unable to get anything going at any point in the third quarter. Crimson Tide star Ryan Coleman-Williams dropped a handoff from Russell in the third quarter as well, as Alabama appeared to be having some major communication issues in the second half of play.
The Tide ultimately won the game by a final score of 48-10, but Grubb’s comments clearly point to the offensive unit lacking serious communication in the third quarter nonetheless.
