COLUMBIA, S.C. — Even if for a moment, Alabama’s players on Saturday might have wondered if this is what it felt like the last time the Crimson Tide visited Williams-Brice Stadium.
A short first-quarter sequence — including two sacks of Tua Tagovailoa, a partially blocked Alabama punt, a negated Gamecocks touchdown on special teams and an improbable 31-yard touchdown reception by Shi Smith through two Bama defenders — well, it was setting up to be a similar outcome to the Gamecocks' two-touchdown upset of the Tide in 2010.
In reality, it was a passing storm, one No. 2 Alabama successfully weathered en route to a 47-23 win over Will Muschamp's Gamecocks. In so doing, though, a concerning trend emerged: Alabama put up 495 yards of offense, but it only had 76 on the ground, and on just 25 rushing attempts. The offensive line again struggled at the point of attack, allowing the Gamecocks’ front seven to get pressure in the backfield on several occasions.
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"We need to have more balance on offense," Alabama coach Nick Saban said after the game. "It's great that we're a great passing team, and I'm happy with that, and I think we’re doing a good job of reaching some of our best talent on our team by what we’re doing. But I also think from a team standpoint, we've got to be able to run the ball effectively as well.”
Indeed, Saban said South Carolina's commitment to stopping the run — using a combination of Cover 6 and placing six or more defenders in the box — is what led to Alabama's deluge of passes.
It's hard to argue with the results: Tua Tagovailoa completed 28 of 36 passes for a career-high 444 yards and five touchdowns. DeVonta Smith and Henry Ruggs III combined for 258 receiving yards and three touchdowns. Running back Najee Harris added two more scores through the air and Jerry Jeudy, arguably the best of Alabama’s receivers, pulled in six receptions for 68 yards.
Said Tagovailoa of his day: "I think as a quarterback you’ve got to expect to throw the ball a lot. I think the game plan coming into this game was to be aggressive within the perimeters — bubble throws — because of how they stack the box. So we took our chances, took our shots."
That said, Alabama has 221 rushing yards on 67 carries combined in two games against Power 5 opponents, a paltry 3.3 yards per carry. No matter how good the pass game is, such low production does not make for a winning formula. That seeming inability to run the ball has, naturally, led to questions about how the Tide will handle future defenses, with better talent and a plan to stymie its receiving corps.
To that, Saban offered this:
"I'm not apologizing for (passing) because we continue to make plays," he said. "But I don’t think you can totally depend on that. I think last year we got to where we were so good at doing that, we didn't do other things well. And we played really good teams at the end and we couldn't do enough other things well to be effective."
Those "good teams" Saban spoke of were Georgia and Clemson, against whom Tagovailoa completed 32 of 59 passes for 459 yards, with three touchdowns and four interceptions. Backup QB Jalen Hurts — now at Oklahoma — bailed out Alabama against Georgia in the SEC championship game.
The Tide couldn’t adjust against Clemson, suffering a 44-16 loss that remains the worst in Saban’s Alabama tenure.
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Alabama’s offensive playmakers, for their part, don’t seem too worried about early struggles along the front or its difficulty in running the ball.
"We got a lot to work on. It's not hard to see that,” Harris said. "It’s just finding our identity. It's the first three games, so we're just trying to see all the stuff we've got to work on. People make it seem like you can't run the ball, but everybody's stopping the run first. But we're going to work on that stuff."
Perhaps the return of guard Deonte Brown, who will finish his six-game suspension next week when Southern Miss travels to Tuscaloosa, will help the offensive line jell. Perhaps that will help against SEC West bottom-dweller Ole Miss in Week 5, and against Texas A&M in Week 7. But greater challenges await, including a Nov. 9 meeting with No. 4 LSU and a trip to always-dangerous Jordan-Hare Stadium to take on Auburn.
All that is to say Alabama has time to find its offensive identity, which — despite its acumen in passing the ball — is one Saban and Co. want to be considerably more balanced.
"Is this who we are? I think it's still kind of early to say who we are as far as an offense," Tagovailoa said. "This is our first SEC game, it was on the road. Whatever challenges we face next, I think you can come back in probably the 12th game — the last (regular-season) game — and ask me that same question, and I'll be able to answer it better."
