Last week, I spent much of this column praising the defense and coordinator Manny Diaz. This week was a complete 180. The defense looked sluggish all night, simply not making big plays. UAB’s 354 yards are nothing out of the ordinary for this defense (although a team of UAB’s caliber still shouldn’t put up that many), but the usual bend-but-don’t-break mindset just didn’t hold up. So much for holding teams to below their average points — UAB is averaging only 19.7 points per game against much worse opponents.
Where was the defensive line? Yes, the unit did record a few quarterback hurries and a sack, but UAB dominated our defensive line all game and moved the ball with ease on its scoring drives. And it’s not like UAB just randomly has a great offensive line like non-AQ teams occasionally do.
Where was the tackling? I can’t find any statistics on missed tackles, but it seemed like we missed way too many of them. After recording 10 tackles for loss against Florida, the defense only made five against UAB.
Where was the pass coverage? UAB quarterback Bryan Ellis didn’t exactly torch us, but each of UAB’s four scoring drives included a big pass play or two, and on UAB’s touchdown right before the half, the receiver was wide open.
Offensively, the team just couldn’t get it going either. I realize we were without top running back Vick Ballard, but the anemic offense was incapable of finishing drives (being held to five field goals) or even starting them (being held to five three-and-outs).
I thought the coaching staff had finally learned to rely mostly on running the ball, but I guess I was wrong — on the very first possession of the game, there was Chris Relf throwing two incompletions on a three-and-out. The same thing happened early in the second quarter.
I know there were receivers open —  Arceto Clark could have scored on one particular pass had Relf gotten him the ball. I know we need to try to get Relf as much practice and as many completions as we can so later SEC defenses will respect his arm, but killing early drives is not the way to do it. If the Bulldogs had run the ball down UAB’s throat from the very beginning, the game may have never been close.
However, I can’t say everything was terrible. LaDarius Perkins stepped in for Ballard and rushed 18 times for 131 yards, including a 51-yarder, and was named SEC Freshman of the Week. After field goal woes lately, the staff made a change and used Derek DePasquale on field goals. He nailed all five of his attempts. Maybe he should be handling kickoffs too — at the very least, I bet he wouldn’t kick it out of bounds.
I’ve been saying all season we should utilize wide receiver Michael Carr more. Carr, probably our biggest recruit in this spring’s class, had played in only three games before Saturday and had yet to touch the ball. It seemed like we were burning his redshirt for nothing. But against UAB, not only did Carr break off a 20-yard run that helped set up a field goal, he made the play of the night by forcing a fumble on UAB’s final kickoff return, sealing the game.
Some of the Internet sheep have already talked about how UAB “isn’t that bad” or might even be Conference USA champs. They’re wrong. UAB is ranked all the way down at 123rd in the Sagarin computer rankings, and even in the more accurate Sagarin Predictor, the Blazers only rise to 111th. In fact, the Blazers’ five losses have included 1-5 Florida Atlantic at home, and it took a miracle Hail Mary for UAB to beat Troy.
Despite the poor performance, the Bulldogs moved up one spot in the AP Poll to No. 23 and moved to No. 21 in the BCS. Unlike last week, I won’t complain about an undeservedly low ranking, but I do believe our entire body of work warrants a ranking.
According to pollspeak.com, 58 of the 60 AP voters included MSU on their top 25 ballots. Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I was able to contact the two non-believers and ask why. They both responded.
Chris Fowler of ESPN, who also left off Arkansas but included Hawaii, Nevada, and East Carolina on his ballot, told me, “Yeah, it was a struggle for #’s 23-25. Didn’t like MSU’s UAB performance, but Dogs belong as much as 3 u mentioned. Beat UK!”
At least he was nice about it. Desmond Conner of The Hartford Courant, who actually put Florida at No. 24, simply said, “lol oh my now were talking about No24 and 25 lol.”
The bottom line is we’re lucky we were just playing UAB. If we play like this the rest of the season, we’re looking at 6-7 with a rematch loss to Houston in the Liberty Bowl. We can’t count on fumbles and field goals to bail us out every week. On the other hand, if we revert to how we’ve played the rest of the season, we ought to win eight or nine (or more) games and then even Conner won’t be able to scoff at the Bulldogs.
Oh, and I’m really happy we’re bowl eligible.