Alabama played like they expected to roll over The Citadel last Saturday. While the 50-17 final looks okay, the game was 10-10 at the half with Alabama executing as badly as it has all season. Auburn looked much crisper in their warm up game against Liberty and now the two clash in what should be another outstanding edition of the Iron Bowl.
By Steve Wright
Here are the three keys:
Force Auburn into third down
The Tigers biggest issue in 2018 has been their ability to convert on third down. Much of this is because the running game isn’t working with any kind of consistency, but their conversion rate of just 34-percent is good for 104th in the FBS.
Even last week in a game where Auburn crushed Liberty 53-0, the Tigers were miserable on third down. In that game they converted just 2-of-12 chances in a contest where the pressure was off as the rolled to an easy win. Nick Saban will know this and he will make sure that Auburn is forced into third and long as often as possible, especially with the advantage of the crowd noise that will be taking over at Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Hope it doesn’t come down to the kicker
This Alabama team sits somewhere between very good and great in almost every single aspect of football. The one aspect that breaks that trend is the kicking game, where the Crimson Tide has been beyond awful.
Alabama has missed eight extra points through 11 games. That is simply not good enough. To this point it hasn’t come close to mattering as Alabama runs opponents off of the field by 30 and 40 points a game. There is however a nagging doubt that this kind of inefficiency in the kicking game will hurt Alabama at some point in 2018.
In total, Crimson Tide kickers have missed 12 kicks on extra points and field goals inside 40 yards. Auburn knows that by holding Alabama to kicks anything can happen.
Contain Jarrett Stidham
The only chance Auburn has here is if quarterback Stidham goes off.
The Tigers defense is a swarming unit that is more than capable of keeping the Alabama offense in check to some degree, though their secondary will be targeted by the surgical arm of Tua Tagovailoa. All the defense in the world won’t matter though if the Tigers are unable to move the ball on an Alabama defense that has been rounding into form all season and which is peaking at just the right time.
Auburn isn’t going to run the ball on Alabama as their ground game just isn’t consistent enough. That means that Stidham is going to have to have the type of transcendent game that Auburn fans expected out of the Baylor transfer for the Tigers to win. If the Alabama pass rush can get to Stidham and force him into mistakes then Alabama wins this game going away.
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