Alabama's D Weak Against Dual Threat Quarterbacks? #AlabamaDefensiveWeakness

As promised here is the rundown on a couple different items:

1. What to make of the Oklahoma St story from Sports Illustrated

2. 5 SEC Players receiving benefits

3. My assumption that Alabama's D may have a weakness

4. How the season of Illinois rests in the hands of their quarterback Nathan Scheelhaase


1. Oklahoma State
If you have not read the first 4 parts of Sports Illustrated's expose on Oklahoma State, (like I have), let me save you trouble. Here is the entire run-down and the fall-out as expeditiously as I can put it:

Sports Illustrated claims to have uncovered the worst and most damnable actions a college football team can do in the name of success. They have 12 former players on record with this and have found SO MUCH wrong-doing that they had to split this story into 5 parts. The first part detailed how boosters were handing out cash to performing players who were broke (not necessarily the best players with the biggest games), how boosters would have players come to their house or ranch and be paid for fishing, or "working cattle", or doing nothing. The second part was about academics and how players were giving passing grades but then failed when they were off the team, that tutors did all the work, that other players did all the work, and that Les Miles and Mike Gundy de-emphasized academics and created a bad culture. The third part was about the rampant drug use on the OSU team. These mis-creants smoked weed. A college kid smoked weed...But I digress, they also claim that were something like 10 "dealers" on the team between the years of 2004-2011 or something like this, honestly at this point my eyes were starting to blur the stats. These "dealers" were peddling weed, Xanax, ephedrine, and steroids. And then today we were told that a group within the group Orange Pride would sleep with recruits in order to get them to come to the program. The Orange Pride is a hostess group that dines and entertains recruits, and apparently some of these girls took their job extremely seriously and went above and beyond.
Since the reports started coming out ESPN has revealed that actual school documents show that there are abundant lies and falsehoods in the academic portion of the report. It was also revealed that of the 12 players that were quoted in the SI article that 9 were kicked off the team or dismissed or transferred because of playing time. And then there have been quite a few of them that have come out and shown in detail how they were mis-quoted by SI. And if that is not enough here are the rest of the reasons why I believe the SI piece doesn't hold water:
1. The number of denials coming from former players, boosters, current and former faculty, and the actual players quoted. The response has been immediate and devastating in my eyes.
2. One of the boosters accused of paying players for work has proof of going through the OK State's compliance office. I could see a reporter twisting this to try to make a point, or just flat out leaving out a detail or too. It's not like they didn't do it already.
3. Oklahoma State is a big university, I am sure they have a lot of girls, and in those girls I am sure there are some that like the idea of having sex with high profile athletes or potential high profile athletes. Is it that crazy to think that "some" of these hostesses had sex with recruits? No. Does that mean that these select few could very well have acted on their own without any else's knowledge or approval? Yes. Does that mean that Les Miles and Mike Gundy are pimps? No. Do we really want our college football coaches worried about this kind of thing that "might" be going on? No.
4. As I have said before it is absolutely SHOCKING that there might have been college kids, that just so happened to play football, smoking weed. And it is just as shocking that we might have had some players who were not good enough to make the team trying to up their performance? Is this proof of wide-spread corruption within the program? No.
5. The only part of this SI story that might have some validity is the academics piece, this may or may not go on at some level in all Division I schools. Hell it happens in high school sometimes. But this is the part of the report where the "credible" sources have been shown to be the most in-accurate.
Frankly, I am done talking about this subject, if you want to know more you can find it anywhere but here. This report is below us as a college football watching community, I have lost all respect for SI who used to my favorite sports reporters and I am moving on to actual football.

AFTER:

2. SEC Players Receiving Benefits
Okay, we might have some problems here. Yahoo has un-covered text messages, Western Union receipts, bank statements, and flight receipts that tie 5 SEC Players to a middle-man between them and NFL agents. The agents claim they had no idea that money they were giving this guy was being used on these players. This one looks bad. There seems to be a lot of proof in black and white on this that is going to be hard to refute. From what I have found only 1 of the SEC players has come out to deny this, granted, it is the one with the most to lose, or I should say, the one who's team has the most to lose. For those of you who may not know the 5 players are former Tennessee quarterback Tyler Bray, current Tennessee d-lineman Maurice Couch, former Miss. St players: Chad Bumphis and Fletcher Cox, and former Alabama lineman D.J. Fluker. My first question is: Why these five players? Really? What was the gain here? Except for Fluker did any of these players or teams matter on the grand scale of things? My second question is: How bad is the trash talking from the B10 going to be when Alabama gets stripped of its National Title because of this dumbass? I hate to see people make stupid mistakes like this. It's also selfish because he won't be the one punished, only his team, his school, and the fans. I wish there was a way that an entire school could not be punished for the stupid selfish actions of one asshole. But anyways, this story seems pretty legit and I expect the punishment to match what happened to USC after the Reggie Bush fiasco. But what angers me most are all of these self-righteous, holier than thou, judgemental, we are tired of being picked on, B10 slugs coming out of the wood work to rub this in Alabama's and the SEC's face like a dog that just sh*t on the carpet. True, the SEC lumped it on the B10 in wake of the Ohio State thing a few years ago, but can't we all just grow up and talk about football? And football says: Alabama WITHOUT Fluker could still have beaten Ohio State WITH Tyrelle Pryor.

3. Alabama's D against running quarterbacks
Since 2009, Alabama has lost 5 games. Here is a list of those teams and the quarterback of those teams:
2010: South Carolina and Stephen Garcia
          LSU and Jordan Jefferson
          Auburn and Cam Newton
2011: LSU and Jordan Jefferson
2012: Texas A&M and Johnny Manziel
Also within those years Alabama was played tough in 2009 by Tyrod Taylor and Virginia Tech AND LSU and that guy: Jordan Jefferson. But Alabama CRUSHED Tim Tebow of Florida, Denard Robinson of Michigan, and Everett Golson of Notre Dame within that same time frame; and oh yeah, they beat LSU and Jordan Jefferson. So now lets take a closer look at these quarterbacks to verify the legitimacy of my claim on Bama's D:
Stephen Garcia: Rushing Yards in 09: 198, 2010: 186, 2011: 222, 2012: 171
                         Passing Yards in 08: 832, 2009: 2862, 2010: 3059, 2011: 844
                         Career completion %: 56%
                         Game against Bama: 201 yards passing, 11 yards rushing on 7 attempts
Garcia does not fit the bill of a running quarterback. But he beat Alabama...but South Carolina was Bama's 3rd consecutive Top 25 team to play in 3 weeks and 2nd on the road in that time span.

Jordan Jefferson: Rushing Yards: 09: 171, 2010: 450, 2011: 263
                          Passing Yards: 09: 2166, 2010: 1411, 2011: 737
                          3 year completion %: 59.67
                          Games against Bama: 09 - 16 rush, 114 pass, Alabama win
                                                           10 - 27 rush, 141 pass, Alabama loss
                                                           11 - 43 rush, 67 pass, Alabama loss
                                                           11 - 15 rush, 53 pass, Alabama win
While not the greatest dual threat quarterback to ever grace a football field, Jefferson was able to put up some rushing yards in his career. His stats against Alabama are not that great however, even in the wins. But what Jefferson had was a stifling defense at his back. Bottom line, while not overly effective Jefferson did present the problem of a dual threat, if you feared that 59% completion percentage.

Cam Newton: Rushing Yards: 2010: 1473
                      Passing Yards: 2010: 2854
                      Completion %: 66.1%
                      Game against Bama: 39 rush, 216 pass, Alabama loss
Newton was about a legit dual threat quarterback as one could have. He stretched defenses, and he made plays with his arm and legs. He put the pressure on Alabama in the Iron Bowl and made a great come from behind victory. Auburn was National Champion this year as well, and un-defeated.

Denard Robinson: Rushing Yards: 09: 351, 2010: 1702, 2011: 1176, 2012: 1266
                            Passing Yards: 09: 188, 2010: 2570, 2011: 2173, 2012: 1319
                            Career completion %: 53.95%
                            Game against Bama: 27 rush, 200 pass, Alabama win
Robinson was another legit dual threat QB although he was exposed as more of runner than a quarterback later on as he gave way to Devin Gardner. Alabama didn't care what he was in the season opener of 2012.

Everett Golson: Rushing Yards: 2012: 298
                        Passing Yards: 2012: 2405
                        Completion %: 58.8%
                        Game against Bama: -7 rush, 270 pass
National Championship game that was dominated by Alabama. Golson was an athletic quarterback with the ability to run and stretch defenses, but was completely shut down. What do they say about giving Saban a month to prepare?

Tyrod Taylor: Rushing Yards: 07: 420, 08: 738, 09: 370, 2010: 659
                      Passing Yards: 07: 927, 08: 1036, 09: 1123, 2010: 2743
                      Career completion %: 56.65%
                      Game against Bama: -26 rush, 91 pass, Alabama win
A pretty good runner and great athlete, but didn't seem to stress Alabama out too much. This was another season opener, and Alabama actually trailed going into the 4th quarter, no thanks to Taylor though.

Tim Tebow: Rushing Yards: 06: 469, 07: 895, 08: 673, 09: 910
                   Passing Yards: 06: 358, 07: 3286, 08: 2746, 09: 2895
                   Career completion %: 66.45%
                   Game against Bama: 63 rush, 247 pass, Alabama win
This was the SEC Championship game, no week in between from the last game of the season, Tebow was absolutely a dual threat and put up some decent numbers, but the Gators were dominated all game long.

Johnny Manziel: Rushing Yards: 2012: 1410
                         Passing Yards: 2012: 3706
                         Career completion %: 68%
                         Game against Bama: 92 rush, 253 pass, Alabama loss
A dual threat with the best of them, ie: Newton and Tebow. He put the pressure on Bama's D and got the win IN Alabama. However, Alabama had played an emotionally draining game the week before in LSU when they pulled out a last minute victory...maybe some mental fatigue on the field in this one.

The conclusion is that in Alabama's 5 losses in the past 4 years 2 of those have been to legit dual threats (Newton and Manziel), 2 have been to an athletically gifted quarterback capable of breaking plays (Jefferson twice), and 1 to more of a pocket passer (Garcia). In 2 of those losses Alabama may have been suffering from mental fatigue (South Carolina, A&M), and in the other 3 we know LSU and Alabama are always going to play each other tough and that game could go either way; and Auburn was purely the better team in 2010. Finally I don't think a case can be made that it is PURELY a dual threat quarterback that beats Alabama, otherwise Denard Robinson and Tim Tebow should have pulled out victories. But if a team has a gifted quarterback and a great defense or can catch Alabama on a "down" week anything can happen. As for A&M this weekend, Saban has had 2 weeks to prepare for Johnny, and Alabama has nothing to be tired from or any team to be looking ahead to next week. A&M will get Alabama's best punch and we will know if it is a National Championship caliber punch when it's over.

4. Nathan Scheelhaase - Quarterback Illinois
Who is this guy some of you may be asking? Let me remind you.
While watching Illinois and Cincinnati last weekend I was reminded of Scheelhouse as I watched him shred the Cincy D and I remembered: "Didn't this guy used to light teams up like this 2 years ago? What happened last year?" One question led to another and eventually I had done an entire work-up on Scheehaase and found some interesting stats.
First some background on Illinois. In 2010 they were 6-6, went to a bowl game and beat Baylor. In 2011 they won their first 6 games of the year, lost the next 6, still managed to get to a bowl and beat UCLA. In 2012 they went 2-10...
Now take a look at Scheelhaase's stats those years:
2010: 1825 passing yards, 868 rushing, 58% completion, 17-8 TD-INT ratio
2011: 2110 passing, 624 rushing, 63.2%, 13-8 TD/INT
2012: 1361 passing, 303 rushing, 60.6%, 4-8 TD/INT
Now if those stats don't completely correspond to how the seasons went for Illinois maybe these will make it more clear:
2010 Losses
46%, 775 yards passing, 7-7 TD/INT
2010 Wins
69%, 1050 yards passing, 10-1 TD/INT. He even outplayed Robert Griffin III in the bowl game that year.
2011 Losses which all came in the last 6 games of the season with Scheelhaase splitting time with another QB and eventually being benched and not playing in the 6th loss
61%, 718 yards passing, 2-4 TD/INT
2011 Wins which all came in the first 6 games of the year
65%, 1377 yards passing, 11-4 TD/INT
2012 was a disaster for Scheelhaase as he couldn't stay healthy, he missed 2 games and parts of 3 others and struggled when he was in the games.
Now the struggles of the past 2 years cannot be completely put on his shoulders, which should be stated in another way, that the entire team has been put more and more on his shoulders:
Illinois rushing yards 2010: 3199, Scheelhaase was 27% of that total
                                2011: 2232, Scheelhaase was 28% of that total
                                2012: 1504, Scheelhaase was 20% of that total
But as you can see, the Illinois running game has been in steady decline. With no threat of a running game defenses could plan against Scheelhaase more and he took more of a beating, whether it be running the ball or getting sacked, which helped lead to his injury riddled 2012.
So far this year Scheelhaase is NOT running the ball and has passed for 728 yards in 2 games and has a 6-1 TD/INT ratio - not too bad - Illinois is 2-0. Everyone knows I am not a B10 proponent, but this is a quarterback and a team that has become very intriguing. This team absolutely lives and dies with their quarterback, and if he is regaining his form from late 2010 and early 2011, this could be a team to watch out for as the season goes along. And if he becomes a Heisman candidate, remember I reminded you of him first.

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