What Josh Ford provided to the team cannot be measured on paper. Awful.
Rejoice, for this is the day that we Gump. And, if you’re like us, the afterglow of Saturday’s romp in Baton Rouge still hasn’t left you. We’ll wrap up some of that coverage over the next day or two: Alabama’s most important game of the season certainly elicited a lot of analysis.
But, for now, we return to the now, and we begin with hoops:
Aden Holloway is back, folks. After serving a five-game suspension – three exhibition games and the first two regular-season games, the senior guard will make his 2026-27 season debut on Monday night Alabama against Oakland at Coleman Coliseum.
Alabama won all five games without Holloway and is off to a 2-0 start to the regular season after earning wins over Sam Houston and Arkansas State. Holloway should help the offense take another massive step forward. He averaged 16.8 points per game and shot just under 44% from three a season ago.
It’ll be interesting to see if Nate Oats brings Holloway off the bench to acclimate him back to the rotation or if he immediately inserts him into the starting lineup next to Amari Allen in the backcourt. Eventually, that will be the Tide’s starting guard duo, but Oats might bring him along slowly and leave freshman Qayden Samuels in the starting five.
Alabama’s opponent on Monday night is the Oakland Golden Grizzlies out of the Horizon League. Oakland is off to an 0-3 start with losses to Michigan, Stanford, and UC Santa Barbara, all on the road. The Golden Grizzlies rank 213th in KenPom.
The return of ‘Bama’s best triggerman is desperately needed.
Cole Cloer has been unable to hit the broadside of a barn in the regular season, and Qayden Samuels showed on Friday why he’s the third-team point guard. Combined, that pair went 0-for-13 from the perimeter. Getting Biz back is critical for the Tide’s success this year…and knocking off the rust in this bodybag game is the first step to getting there (Seriously, Oakland lost to the UCSB Gauchos by almost 30 points on Friday. They’re awful this year).
The game will be tonight, at 6:30 local time, and is only available on the ESPN+ streaming service. Not even the Ocho wants this one.
For the third time in a month, Nate Oats has invited key Top 100 recruits to Tuscaloosa — all of them in the Top 10 at their position. And for a third time, Nate and Murph got their man, this time in the form of hella’ athletic center Yohane Kabango.
The 6’9″ beast from the Congo is only rated a four-star because he has been buried in low-level African leagues. The more national exposure he gets stateside, the more rapidly he has shot up recruiting charts. He is a big man version of Jaxon Richardson, and running the floor he doesn’t even remotely resemble a post player; he’s that fluid.
The Pass Rush (and patience) won in Baton Rouge.
Everyone has remarked about how inexplicable Alabama’s win over LSU seemed. But, when you retrofit the numbers in, Connelly’s SP+ found that ‘Bama had a 90%(!!!) PGWE — that acronym is “post game win expectancy,” the percent chance a random team would win given the actual statistics.
It may not seem like it, but Alabama actually dominated several key areas , such as pass rush. Bama made life miserable for Leavitt, often with little more than four down linemen caving in the Tigers’ pocket.
And, as we noted on Thursday and Saturday, the return of Green changes everything: not just the run defense, which was superb (UA outrushed LSU in yards and YPC), but also in pass rushing. For the first time in three weeks, teams were not able to key in on Devan Thomkins, and he balled out, notching two sacks — his first since Green went down.
No coincidence that when Green returned after two-plus games, ‘Bama also had its best pass rush in two-plus games — Sam Leavitt only had a clean pocket on half of his throws. That’s how you do it. It’s also no surprise that the first person Devan thanked was TG — Big ole’ 99 changes a lot of things for the Tide.
Balloons over at RBR has some great charts up, as usual, and they seem inexplicable at first, but there are also hidden factors that Alabama dominated that don’t show up at first blush — For instance, if you’re LMFK, the last thing you wanted was Sam Leavitt throwing 49 times and a healthy Alabama defensive front. The Tigers got both…and a B2A home loss to the Tide.
We’ll have a bit more on the LSU game coming up for you soon.
The voters weren’t as impressed, it seems. Despite having the Nation’s No. 1 SOS, and the No. 4 SOV — with three wins over Top 25 teams by 18+ and a five TD thrashing of a healthy MSU, ‘Bama is just 7th in both the AP and Coaches poll. Good ole’ Indiana is getting a lot of currency from an officiating gimme against Northwestern and a close home loss to 6-3 OSU.
But, sure, there’s a conspiracy to overrank the SEC. Pfffft.
Time for the first rainbow pony to get saddled up on the Carousel: FSU has finally hired a new AD. And you know what that means: It means we watch the western horizon for Jimbo to come riding back into Tallahassee and take over the ‘Noles.
The first domino has fallen, things are about to get (even more) stupid, and Jimmy Sexton is about to be even richer.
Mayhaps FSU will look to Tuscaloosa for an up and coming offensive mastermind? It will be a sacrifice, but Ryan Grubb has earned his shot, we think.
I don’t know how to adequately put this into words, but God, this sucks so much.
Ford is a very capable tight end in his own right. Soft hands, great blocking, easily gets lost in redzone traffic, etc. But he’s also the heart and soul of that offensive line group, the chief instigator, and the physical tone-setter for the squad. You can replace him on paper with any one of five great tight ends, but you can’t replace the intangibles that he brings, how he gets into opponents heads, or the sheer intimidation factor of Ginger 40.
I genuinely feel terrible for him too, after battling back from a broken arm. Gone for the year with a knee injury.
Let’s take it out with his final big play for the Tide: His receiving TD that gave Alabama the lead for well and good in Baton Rouge.
And, finally, your moment of levity (because do we ever need it now). If you’re gonna’ get pulled over by the cops, have a white guy with you…
That’s all for now. We’ve got some more LSU content to wrap up for you over the next day or two, and we’ll start turning our attention to the woebegone Vanderbilt Commodores. Until, then, thanks for dropping by and take care.
Roll Tide
ALSO: if you’re interested, we desperately need another person to help with football and/or basketball content…hell, even both. Check out the link below. And, really, give it some consideration. We’re growing very fast, and while that is a good problem to have, it still a baked-in problem: Not enough hands on deck for all we do and all we want to do for you.
Roll Tide
Well shitballs. We’ll miss Ford. Maybe not the next three weeks but in the playoffs for sure.
That’s what I was thinking. The next two weeks for sure are a time to get healthy, but not even that dude shrugs off an ACL.
We’ll miss him in the later rounds of playoffs 100%.
Jack Youngblood did.
I’m ready for him to pull a LaDick and appear in the kneeldown at the end of the CFP Championship Game.
I would actually cry.
Well, poop
I did. It was glorious.
Sonofabitch losing Josh sucks. Great player. Great dude. Everything you want in a football player. I hate it for him too.
Danny Lewis has been playing with a mean streak this year. Hopefully he steps it up with increased playing time.
Though Ford won’t be playing for the remainder of the season you can bet his ass will be on the sidelines hyping bros up. Scott Cochran 2.0?
Didn’t think about that, but yeah, he’s about to be the world’s most terrifying cheerleader. That helps a lot.
This is what I’m counting as a silver lining. He can still bring a good chunk of his intangibles to the team without actually playing in the game. And there’s a “win one for the Gipper” aspect to this too; the other TEs are already a pretty physical group, but now they’ll (hopefully) be motivated to make up for what was lost, and be motivated by Josh himself to do so.
Dammit.
https://trlfootball.com/the-greedy-arsonists-finally-did-it-the-24-team-playoff-is-now-a-reality/
We all knew this was going to happen. At least that is how I saw it. The greedy bastards care more about quantity rather than quality. I don’t mind more games, but I don’t like the degradation of the sport.