Yes, Bama has a good defense ... that was apparent Monday night, but as I was doing a little research about who they played this year, I found this interesting: only one team, Arkansas, was ranked in the Top 30 for total offense. They came in 29th.

Here are the rest of their opponents and respected rankings for Total Offense:

Kent State #119 North Texas #96 Penn State #95 Auburn #100 Vandy #98

Miss. State #85 LSU #73 South Carolina #75 Ole Miss #114 Tenn #104 CORRECTION ADDED: Florida #105

The only opponent that I didn't include was Georgia Southern.

So, I am wondering if Bama's defense is as good as advertised or if they caught a break playing a bunch of team with inept offenses, Arkansas, excluded

How would Bama's defense have fared in the Big 12 or Pac 12? Would they have an answer for RGIII or OSU? Would Tech had given them a run for their money?

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Alright, let's have a little fun. We find ourselves in a difficult situation with our beloved football program. Relationships can be so messy and every once in a while they end badly. As the song goes, "breaking up is hard to do". With so many of us in a funk over the direction of the program, I created a little poll to help us.  Respond to the poll and add your favorite GIF or song lyric to express the stage that you find yourself in.

Get the full transcript here.

COACH TUBERVILLE: All right. Sloppy coaching, sloppy playing. That's about the most hit and miss game I've ever been involved in. Ups and downs, the effort was good. We just didn't coach as good as we needed to, didn't play as good as we needed to.

How are you going to correct sloppy coaching?

 But give credit to Kansas State. That's how they've won all year long. They don't do anything special. I thought the changes they made which they had to make at the half, and we knew they'd do that. They had to come out throwing in the second half. We pretty much stuffed them in the first half. Their quarterback couldn't complete a ball. We had them on their heels and they did exactly what we expected them to do, we just didn't react to it very well.

This leads me to believe one of three things: 1) the coaches are not very good at X’s and O’s and/or coaching up these guys 2) The players are outmatched 3) Combo of the first two. Let’s read on:

 It's just amazing to me how we can continue to keep giving up points when we matched up pretty good with these guys. That's the part that just kind of makes you wonder.

This seems to eliminate much, but not all, of number two. How could this cause a SEC coach of his caliber to wonder? Shortly after he was hired, someone asked him what he was looking for in assistant coaches. I will never forget what he said. It was my first red flag. He said that he needed guys who could recruit because anyone could do X’s and O’s, but not everyone could recruit. Apparently not. Outside the three turnovers, the K-State coaches put on an X and O clinic in the second half and Tubs boys couldn’t keep up. X and O’s are important.  

But we had some good efforts. We had some guys that played some pretty good games, but you can't turn the ball over like we did, especially in the second half. They took advantage of their opportunities and we didn't take advantage of ours. We had too many missed opportunities. Questions?

Granted, Doege didn’t have a very good game. When he pressured himself, he made mistakes. I would contend that great coaching would have help Doege calm down AND converted our missed opportunities which would have resulted in a win … after all our offense had 580 yards of total offense.

But what disappoints me is the few things on special teams that keep haunting us. If we make those two field goals instead of getting them blocked, you know, we tackle the guy on the kickoff return, just little things that absolutely kill us.

This is why teams have a Special Teams Coordinator. When are you going to get one? Let’s review last year: two onside kicks returned for TD’s; one, maybe two, punt returns for TD’s. What else I am missing DTN? This year: three blocked FG’s, one returned for TD, and one kickoff returned for TD.   That’s at least 42 points given up in two years. Nice job. Your team can not overcome these points with subpar coaching. Either eliminate the mistakes or ramp up your coaching.  

We're not young anymore. We don't talk about that. We've got guys that have played and played in what, five games, six games now. It's time to grow up. It's time to grow up and start doing what you need to do to win game.

Tubs made the conscience and free will decision to hire one of the youngest, most inexperienced staffs in the FBS and paid them on par with the staff at Florida when they won their last BCS championship. See post last year about this last year. Second red flag. How is that for value? They have 19 games under their belt. It’s time for him and his staff to grow up. 

But we just didn't make that adjustment well. We talked about it on defense, they've got to throw the ball. They've got to throw it more. They've got to throw it down the field. They've got to make us back out. And you know we knew it was coming, and that's what we'll look at film tomorrow going we told you this was coming and we just didn't make the plays.

He has said this twice now. Not good. Please pull your head out Tubs and get these guys ready to play.

It was pretty much set in stone the first drive. We kickoff to them and they score on about five plays. Kansas State put their knife in the turf and said, hey, we're going to win this ballgame like we won the other ones and that's the reason we're ranked high, and we didn't respond.

Take away: K-State’s will to will was greater than Tech’s will to win. When is he going to instill the will to win into the team? Where is his killer instinct and inspiration?  I’m waiting.  A while back, he said that it was the player’s responsibility to motivate themselves to win, it’s not the HC’s responsibility. Red flag number three.

Q. On the blocked field goals, what did you see was the issue?

COACH TUBERVILLE: They did a good job of coming. They came through different gaps. Number 95, 94 just got their shoulders turned. Got penetration, and we weren't physical enough at the point of attack, bottom line. Wasn't like what we saw last week where we got beaten off the corner. This was totally different.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. His special teams are like a leaky dam. He plugs one hole, only to see the water create another hole. So, Tubs which part of the dam is going to spring a leak against OU? And when are you going to realize that you need to pass this responsibility of to someone else who knows what they are doing?

 Q. Are you going to make changes on special teams?

COACH TUBERVILLE: I would imagine we'll make quite a few. Problem is we're getting into a situation Ben McRoy got hurt in the first half, we had to take him out. We've got several starters now that we've worked down the ladder that are going on special teams. We're probably going to have to bite the bullet and play a lot of these young guys and put them in and let them play because they're standing over there watching while you're got a guy playing 60 or 70 plays on defense. Then having them play 15 to 20 plays on special teams. It's just hard to do that. We're trying to get the best of both worlds, but we're playing a lot of young guys at other positions. So we'll make some changes going into this week on special teams.

Switching players is nice, but what about devoting more time during practice for the unit so that everyone is crystal clear on technique and responsibility?

What a mess and the sad thing is that it doesn't have to be a mess. I never thought that I would say this, but Tech has the players to win, but doesn't look like they have the staff. Tech is 1-4 in conference play in Lubbock since Tubs took over. if we had a staff that could win, that record could have been flipped. Not good.

1. #82

First off I love stories of transformation and redemption. If Adam has seen of the errors of his past, turned the corner against them, created new work habits, and cleaned up his immature behavior,  then my hats off to him. He is growing up and his character is changing for the better. Good for him. Maybe that is why he was named captain a couple of weeks ago and is receiving more playing time.

However, one of things that I know about human nature is that leopards don't change their spots ... and the further entrenched people are with an entitlement mentality and keep hanging around the same people who enable and rescue them from their bad choices, the more difficult it is for them to change their spots.  In fact, in 20 years of working with people, I have never seen it happen. 

2. Tuberville's Comments

His comments about the offensive possessions against A&M reflect poorly on him. Is he really not that bright? Saying that Tech scores TD's on only 4 of 13 possessions while attempting 5 FG's won't get it done against a quality opponent is true ... BUT this is the hmmm thing for me: in the 13 possessions, Tech was in scoring position 9 of those 13 times. That is good enough to beat a quality opponent. If the rules give you four downs to get a first down, sometimes you have to use all four downs.  Tech's average play from scrimmage was 5.0 yards. Their pass plays averaged 5.9.

There were two fourth down plays that had less than five yards to gain for the first down and one more than five yards.

1) 4th and 2 with 9:43 to go in the 2nd. Ball was on A&M's 10.

2) 4th and 4 with 5:00 to go in the 3rd. Ball was on A&M 28.

3) 4th and 8 with 9:39 to go in the 4th. Ball was on A&M 13.

If you know that you are going to have to score more than 40 to win, you have to show that you have confidence in your offense that they can get it done in four plays and play the percentages. Percentages say they convert on two of three and keep the drives. One for a TD, the other not so sure.

The last fourth down was close enough to the end zone to take a calculated risk. They completed 2/3 of their passes against the 120th ranked pass defense in the nation. Their average completed pass netted 8.8 yards. This means they have a 66% chance of gaining the first down.

Things that make me go hmmmm ...