I don't know about you guys, but even after such a miserable season I'm still sad that there won't be any more Alabama football 'til August.
Why we love Joe Kines:
"My fault," Kines said. "We couldn't get off the blocks, and if I'd coached them better, we would've been able to."
Mike Shula would have put every ounce of blame on the players and their "lack of execution."
Those words haven't been spoken very often in the six weeks, at least not in reference to the Alabama head coaching position.
Joe Kines spoke them loudly Thursday evening.
...
"I don't believe that junk about too much expectation," he said. "That's what's wrong with the world anyway. Too many people settle for average.
"We're not going to settle for average at Alabama."
That's the exact attitude that every coach should have, not the "Alabama fans have unreasonable expectations" attitude the failures that ESPN hires have.
Even though the defense probably had it's worse performance of the season yesterday, I still say it's a credit to the man's coaching that he turned this group into a top 20 defense. I hope he sticks around, he's been one of the few points of pride for us lately.
Alabama's recruiting takes it's first hit from the Shula firing as Mike Ford heads for South Florida instead. Thankfully RB is a position where we're pretty well stocked.
Alabama managed to score in the Red Zone (including the brilliant Andre Smith call), but keeping Shula and letting Rader call the plays still wouldn't have remedied the offensive woes. As I pointed out yesterday, OSU's defense is nowhere close to SEC caliber, and his offense wouldn't have gotten close to 31 points against our conference schedule. As much venom as I've hurled his way, I hate for the guy to go out like this. It's a shame Shula talked him out of retirement. I want to wish him the best of luck in whatever it is he does next.