Are things really as bad as last season when Alabama’s poor defense cost them a chance for another playoff appearance? Well let’s look at the numbers and see for ourselves.

In 2019 over a 13 game schedule here are the key defensive stats compared to this year so far:

————————————————-2019—————————————2020

Avg. points per game given up – 18.6 ————————————–30.3

Rushing yards given up per game – 137.15——————————-150.66

Passing yards given up per game – 187.23——————————–322.33

Total yards offense given up per game – 324.38—————————–473.00

3rd down conversion rate of opponent – 35.68%——————————54%

So it’s pretty obvious that things are getting worse than than 2019’s awful numbers. This is worse than week 1, worse than week 2. Whatever the defense has been working on in practice is obviously not being learned.

Opposing receivers have been running wide open in some cases, players have looked confused and fundamentals, like tackling have shown problems.

There is not a major area of total defense that shows any improvement from last season and in fact, most everything looks far worse.

Alabama looks like a Big 12 defense that Tide fans have joked about for so long. They look at those track meet kind of scores and point to that as why they don’t win championships. “You win with defense”, they’ve always heard and said themselves.

So if that indeed is true, then Alabama has a long, long way to go to returning to another championship season. Now Nick Saban hasn’t forgotten how to coach. He sees the problems and knows how to fix them and fans can only hope they are indeed fixed before they blow another season as they did last year.

Many fans are placing the blame at Pete Golding’s feet. In his second year as Alabama’s defensive coordinator, he has done little to inspire the fans that he was the correct hire for that job. Still, the season is early and it’s just his second year.

But with Charley Strong waiting in the wings as one of Nick Saban’s many analysts, Golding must surely feel the heat because so far, the signs have not been better this season that he’s on the right track, they’re worse. Far worse.

Larry Burton is the senior writer at Touchdown Alabama Magazine and has been published in almost every media outlet for college sports. He was Bleacher Report’s #1 college football writer in reads and comments and now has slowed down his writing from that hectic pace. Follow Larry on Twitter for inside thoughts and game time comments at  https://twitter.com/LBSportswriter