After Alabama’s 42-21 thrashing of the Florida Gators on Saturday, Alabama fans are slowly beginning to realize how it was so easy for Tennessee fans to fall in love with Lane Kiffin. Coach Kiffin has brought a spark to the Alabama offense that hasn’t been there since, well, ever. On Saturday, Kiffin dialed up play after play that let Blake Sims, who most fans had written-off as never being able to play quarterback for Alabama, dice the Florida defense for 445 yards passing, a single game record for an Alabama quarterback in Bryant-Denny Stadium. Led by Sims, Alabama’s offense broke another record in Bryant-Denny on Saturday by gaining more yards (645) against Florida than any team other team in Florida’s long history of football, topping the previous record (629 yards) held by Nebraska following its 1996 steamrolling of Florida in the Fiesta Bowl.
Not one to be outdone by his quarterback, Amari Cooper had another stellar day and became Alabama’s All-Time leader in touchdown catches. For those counting at home, that’s the fourth Alabama receiving record for Amari Cooper to topple. Amari might not win the Heisman Trophy, but expect him to at-least get an invite to New York for the ceremony.
Despite the outcome, the game wasn’t always smooth sailing and there is certainly still room for concern on the part of Alabama fans. Early in the game, Alabama broke one of the 10 football commandments “though shall not turn the ball over” and broke it a lot. After the third turnover, I didn’t really care so much that we turned it over as long as the camera man panned over so I could see Coach Saban’s reaction. Fortunately, Florida didn’t really know what to do with the ball once it got it.
While the Alabama defense played well, the real credit has to go to Florida quarterback Jeff Driskel who was pure hot garbage. Driskell managed to go just 9 of 28 for 93 yards, and was so bad on Saturday that two different Florida wide receivers took to Twitter on Sunday publically stating that there needed to be a change a quarterback, ouch.
After the early miscues by Alabama, the only other scare came when Blake Sims went to the locker room after getting hurt on a 24-yard run late in the third quarter. Sims appeared to be clutching his right shoulder on the sideline but was able to return to the game. In practice, on Monday and Tuesday Sims has been limited, but we’ve been assured those limitations are solely precautionary.
On the recruiting front, Alabama had just as good of a day. Alabama commits Calvin Ridley (wide receiver) and Shawn Burgess-Becker (wide receiver) were among the contingent of pledges in town for the Florida game and the pair plan to return to Tuscaloosa in November for the Iron Bowl with no other visits set. Tide quarterback commit Blake Barnett made his first trip to Tuscaloosa since he committed to the Tide in June. Barnett and his family took a redeye from California and arrived on Saturday morning.
The big news was the arrival of several Five-star Georgia commits, Trent Thompson (defensive tackle) and Terry Godwin (athlete), both visiting for the second consecutive weekend. In fact, some think Godwin could flip his commit to the Tide.
