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Alabama’s offense has been getting plenty of attention, some would say not as much attention as it deserves, prior to Saturday night’s showdown with LSU.
But not many could argue that the defense deserved the spotlight that it put on itself last night in a 10-0 win over LSU in Baton Rouge.
Alabama’s defense has been the team’s greatest strength throughout this season, but Saturday’s game marked the unit’s strongest outing thus far. Alabama held LSU’s rushing attack to just 33 total yards after giving up 54 yards in their meeting last season. Just a week ago, LSU rushed for 311 yards against Ole Miss.
Leonard Fournette had the team’s longest rush of the game on Saturday, a 9-yard gain.
Alabama gave up just six first downs for the entire game and just one in the second half. The effort led to Alabama shutting out a ranked opponent for the first time since 2002 when Nick Saban was the head coach at LSU. The one time LSU came close to scoring points, defensive back Ronnie Harrison blocked a 49-yard field goal attempt.
Aside from Alabama’s success in the running game, the team applied constant pressure to LSU quarterback Danny Etling and didn’t allow many explosive plays. The one explosive play more than 15 yards Alabama allowed in the game was a 41-yard completion to DJ Chark in the first quarter.
Alabama tallied five sacks in the game, two more than LSU had allowed in any single game this season. On LSU’s opening offensive drive on a critical 3rd-and-7, Tim Williams and Ryan Anderson sacked Etling to effectively end the drive. On LSU’s second offensive drive, the team recorded two sacks. After the team allowed the 41-yard gain to Chark, Jonathan Allen had a sack followed by a sack on the very next play by Rashaan Evans, a play that sent LSU to 4th-and-long.
On LSU’s opening drive of the second half, Reuben Foster and Ryan Anderson shared a sack on the first play from scrimmage. Later in the third, Dalvin Tomlinson sacked Etling for a loss of 11 yards on a critical 3rd-and-8 at the Alabama 40-yard line.
During the second half, LSU gained a total of just 25 yards. Any short completions made by LSU were stopped well short of the first down marker because of Alabama’s sure open-field tackling.
Etling finished the game just 11-of-24 passing, a 46 percent completion rate for 92 yards with no touchdowns and an interception. In the fourth quarter, Ryan Anderson nearly had a sack but disrupted Etling enough to force an interception caught by Minkah Fitzpatrick.
Alabama used that interception to shave close to 10 minutes off the clock and kick a 25-yard field goal that gave Alabama a crippling 10-0 lead.
In the buildup to the game, LSU head coach Ed Orgeron said his offensive line was the whole key to the game. In the end, it didn’t prove that it could hold up. Leonard Fournette found little room to run and Etling was constantly under pressure, affecting the accuracy that had become reliable under the interim coach.
Once again, the Alabama defense was simply too much. In many cases, it’s been able to buy the Tide offense time to get things going, and one gets the feeling the defense could’ve done it for as long as necessary on Saturday.
