Austin,Tx Major Applewhite, former redheaded Texas Longhorn QB and now former redheaded Lil- Opie- Cunningham-Crimson Tide offensive something or another, is now back(clap clap clap) deep in the heart of Texas as a new and improved-lateral sorta kinda move from the sketchy title of Alabama's "Offensive Coordinator" to the even more sketchy title of Asst Equipment Manager for the girls Softball team......No, really, he is involved in the football team somehow someway to the tune of $300,000 large.....And with the added bonus of no more Nick Saban or JPW and his rag tag band of offensive linemen.....I am sure Major is still getting phone calls at home, at night as we speak...some how some way, Tide fans have a knack of getting Asst. Coaches PrePaid Cell phone numbers, even though they are given a new one every week to throw off the drunk dialin' offensive geniuses that call themselves Tide fans....
This saga began last year when Nick Saban was announced as the Head Coach and he went on a mission to put a staff together....Many raised an eyebrow, or both eyebrows when it was announced he would be the O- Coordinator..... We had seen this before when we hired a young coach named Mike Shula.....except we paid him ALOT more to learn on the job. I am sure MA will be a great O-Coordinator, he just didnt have the talent or felt he didnt have the talent to run what he wanted to run. The biggest gripe Tide fans had was the offense, at times, seem to magically score at will for 1 or 2 quarters, then it would seem that the magic would fade away and would not be able to run up the score or sustain any sort of drive to run out the clock, therefore pinning our thin defense against the wall to hang on barely while the other team came back or relinquishing the lead altogether....perfect example was the bowl game against Colorado. Simply jumped their asses and put 27 points up, then "poof", just like that, the magic was gone, then Colorado went on a run....Its like we have a fast break, run out of gas, and cant recover like a out of control stock car ,then let the pack catch up and pass us instead of standing on it and trying to lap 'em.....
And that my friends, besides the ritual shooting ourselves in the foot when we are in the game with PICK 6's and fumbles and all that rest, was why there was gonna be some changes made. In Nick Sabans words "We just didnt FINISH"..... On the upside, recruiting has the future shining a little brighter and hopefully if we can put some back to back classes together, we can be contenders for the SEC Crown, which in turn should put us in a spot to play for it all in the future. For now, no matter how small our victories are, we need some positives to string together. The main concern I have is that this will be JPW's number 3 in the line of O-Coordinators, and I hope this one will be a charm. I just hope we can run the damn ball on 3 and 3 instead of throwing it out of bounds and over the press box, which basically is why our 3rd Down Conversion Rate sucked----thats the one stat teams that are successful have a high percentage in converting, thus sustaining drives, keeping your defense off the field and hopefully getting to the red zone to put some points on the board.
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