CECIL HURT: Tide can’t change just for the sake of changing

It’s been consistently true, even in those years when the Alabama football team played on Astroturf. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

Alabama fans aren’t unique in wanting something different when the Crimson Tide loses a game or two. Obviously, when a team doesn’t win, it’s because something goes wrong and the usual assumption is that if something goes wrong, then something else would automatically go right.

The most obvious manifestation of that syndrome this week has been the discussion of the Crimson Tide quarterback position. There is no question that John Parker Wilson needs to minimize mistakes and play better than he has played recently. That doesn’t automatically mean that he’ll be replaced, or even that he should be.

But sometimes the second-guessing extends deeper. For instance, Tide head coach Nick Saban was asked at his Wednesday press conference about why the Crimson Tide doesn’t call more running plays for Wilson. In and of itself, it wasn’t a bad question. Wilson is capable of running and has, at times, been succesful on designed runs. But the question – as questions often do – prompted Saban not just to answer, but to reflect like Aristotle on the nature of expectations.

“It is a little bit philosophical in terms of how much you run your quarterback,” Saban said. “You’ve got to have the right system and the right guy to do it. We’re certainly not playing our games with the idea of John Parker getting hurt (in the back of the coaching staff’s minds). But we do feel fortunate that we’ve gotten to this point of the year with him still relatively healthy. And he has been used in some running plays.”

Then, the answer took a more thoughtful turn.

“Everything we don’t do on offense, somebody wants to know why we don’t do it. It’s like the I-formation (and at this point, Saban was recalling a question not from the media, but from a caller on his weekly radio show.)

“People want to know why we don’t run the I-formation. Well, I like the I-formation. In the past, our teams have used some I-formation. But it helps if you have the right players to run it. In order to get our best players on the field, we don’t run the I.”

Saban’s point sounded like the “Alabama talent level” discussion that has gone on all season, but it wasn’t quite the same thing. Saban wasn’t saying that Alabama doesn’t have the talent on hand to win – and hasn’t said that all year. But he did say that Alabama’s roster on offense was more blessed with playmaking ability at certain spots (like wide receiver) than others. Among those other positions is running back, and while that isn’t the only variable in running the I-formation, it’s an important one. No one is saying Alabama’s backs aren’t talented, but at this point, Alabama is just about out of big, tough, durable tailbacks who can line up and run it 25 times a game. If you have Herschel Walker or Bo Jackson, you probably run the I (although Auburn didn’t during Jackson’s career.) If you have DJ Hall and Keith Brown and Matt Caddell, you do something else.

In fact, Saban went on to say that he’s never had a team that faced quite the set of circumstances that Alabama now faces at running back. Demetrius Goode was lost for the year before the year really began. Glen Coffee is suspended. Roy Upchurch is injured. Jimmy Johns hasn’t been able to settle in at any position (although Saban did say that Johns was a possibility at tailback for the Louisiana-Monrie game). So Alabama is left with Terry Grant and Jonathan Lowe, who had only been working at running back for the last four weeks or so.

The point, though, isn’t just that Alabama isn’t tailor-made for a particular formation. The point is that in order to be successful, a coaching staff has to make those decisions early on, settle on an offensive philosophy and then practice in order to make it work. It doesn’t mean that you can’t make adjustments, but it does mean that switching philosophies every other week isn’t likely to be successful. (See the Crimson Tide’s 2000 season for an illustration.)

Usually, the wise move at this point in the season is to keep trying to improve what you can do – not do something entirely different. In other words, the grass might look greener in the I-formation, or the run-and-shoot, or the wishbone – but there probably is a good reason for not jumping the fence and changing pastures.

Cecil Hurt is sports editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Reach him at cecil.hurt@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0225.