.png)
German (DE) 
English (US) 
Spanish (ES) 
French (FR) 
Hindi (IN) 
Italian (IT) 
Russian (RU) 
22 hours ago
1
Good morning, I hope your day is off to a better start than mine — my data site lost 20+ hours of our work, deleting three days worth of save points, at some point between 11:13 p.m. and 4:17 this morning. I could puke. That also means I’m going to have to rewrite Giving Away Money, as there’s no way that’s going to be done today in its usual Wednesday time slot. So, I’ll get it to you tomorrow.
Perhaps some football news will cheer us up?
What if, just if, Florida State is actually really that good? After a few weeks of advanced data, they might be. The net effect is that ESPN’s metrics think Alabama still goes 10-2 and makes the playoffs. Sports Illustrated doesn’t give ‘Bama quite that benefit of the doubt, but it does project the Tide as a New Year Six team.
Of course, computers don’t have eyeballs. And we don’t want the staff or players to get in the habit of shrugging off no-shows just because an opponent was unexpectedly good. But for fans at least that has to be encouraging, right?
The enigma: Alabama. Were the Tide that bad in their loss to Florida State, or are the Seminoles that good? It’s probably a combination of both, but how those teams fare will impact each other’s résumés in the committee meeting room all season. What if Alabama lost on the road to a top-four ACC champion? What if FSU’s big win was against a five-loss Alabama team that spirals down the stretch? Alabama beat down Louisiana-Monroe 73-0 in Week 2. It was the largest shutout for Alabama since 1951. Yes, it was against a weaker opponent, but Ty Simpson still completed all 17 of his passes -- the most without an incompletion in a game in SEC history. So no, the performance against FSU wasn’t good, particularly up front, but ESPN’s FPI projects the Tide to win each of their remaining games -- except on Sept. 27 at Georgia, which is a coin toss (53.6% chance for the Dawgs). If Alabama is a two-loss team with losses to the ACC and SEC champs ... it’s in the playoff.
As a purely intellectual exercise, I plugged the data for both teams back into the model and it comes up Alabama -4.26 on a neutral field, almost two scores fewer than the original opening line. That’s a dramatic shift from preseason expectancy values. So, are the ‘Noles world beaters? Maybe not. But they are a lot better than anyone expected, which only makes sense as it’s an entirely new team, with two new coordinators, two new systems, and a lot of veteran experience.
The sky might just not be falling, at least for the Tide’s larger ambitions.
The 2026 Tide Baseball schedule is out for SEC play, and it’s brutal per usual: Florida, Vandy, road trip to Tennessee, the Arn Bow in Tuscaloosa, etc. But what is criminally absent is the Tide’s rival and defending national champion, LSU. We don’t even get to butt heads with Mississippi State.
The SEC is bound and determined to drag Alabama into Austin and Norman at every opportunity, but you can’t omit Alabama’s oldest and nearest rival, nor one of its fiercest. I bet Roger is in shambles.
Full schedule at the link below.
This is a very interesting podcast, and piggybacks on to last week’s discussion of toxic positivity, where players refuse to even call one another out. In particular, a group of older ‘Bama players discuss what happened in their players-only meetings:
You can hear it for yourself in this very story, but Wallace brought up a tradition of accountability and excellence that they learned during the early years of Nick Saban.
The tradition involved players meeting very late after a game that didn’t live up to the standard and calling each other out, face-to-face, and holding each other accountable for the way that they played and the attitude they displayed.
Sometimes these meetings would take place at 1:30 or two in the morning, but make no mistake, if they had a game that didn’t live up to the standard.
They were going to hold each other accountable.
The game changes. Cohorts change. Successive generations value different things. But what we have here is not just a different way of looking at accountability and creating a team that polices itself from within; it’s a player culture that has taken a complete 180-degree turn. I’m not going to opine on the merits of that (you’ll have your own opinion, of course), but at least in terms of results, it seems to matter.
But, before you make your mind up, consider Bray Hubbard…
Let’s make the opposite case, that accountability is happening via different routes entirely now; internal criticism isn’t quite so necessary because piss poor effort gets you blown up on social media, on your phone, on viral videos.
Case in point, Bray Hubbard’s infamous loafing clip against FSU fueled his play against ULM, where he was named one of the coach’s players of the week:
“Did you take it personally?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I took it personally. It’s on me. I mean, coaches see it. I saw it. It’s obvious. I gotta take it on myself.”
Before the season-opener, Hubbard was never seen as a guy who didn’t give his all on every play. He stepped in for an injured Keon Sabb last season and played with emotion and intensity, not to mention playing at a high level.
So maybe FSU was only a hiccup -- a lesson to be learned.
Hubbard said they need to hold onto that feeling coming out of Tallahassee. It was their job to play “fast and physical and play with effort, and that’s what we didn’t do.”
They know how to fight, he said, they just didn’t show it.
“That was not the standard of how we play,” he added, “so you got to use that every week.”
The more I think about it, the more I think there might be something to this. Social media in particular is such a negative cesspit (and it’s designed to curate and endlessly feed negative emotions in the first place). Perhaps that’s what Cuevas was alluding to when he said they didn’t have to single one another out — they’re already being put on blast in real-time, by millions of people, with their worst moments giving rise to immediate condemnations.
When all you hear is criticism, perhaps the last thing you want or even need is to be criticized from within? You already know you f’d the duck; there has to be a carrot to go with the stick.
Again, I’m not taking a side in this one, but perhaps there is far more to this than “kids these days, argle bargle” (and I am fully aware that I have been guilty of it).
Luke Fickell spoke to the media yesterday, and he didn’t exactly sound like the most confident man in the world that his team has not had the ‘Bama game in the back of their mind, particularly getting off to a sluggish start against woeful Middle Tennessee State.
That’s bad enough as it stands for Bucky, but it’s compounded by a young Sconnie OL that is struggling so far:
“We’re all disappointed in 17 yards in the first half,” Fickell said after the game. “It’s not hard to look at that and know that, and we’ve got to correct some things, and we’ve got to figure some things out. But, I told the running backs afterwards, I went over in their group, and I said, ‘I appreciate their heads were up at half.’
“They came out at halftime, and all three of them were pushing on the O-Line and didn’t look like they were in a pouty bad mood. I don’t know who got carries. I know nobody got many yards, and you think you should be a lot further [in the run game at this part of the season]. But, we didn’t do a great job. We didn’t do a great job in the first half of this past week, and we know that’s where we have to continue to grow.”
If the Tide can make the Badgers a one-dimensional team, and finally drive home all that DL pressure, the potential is there for serious damage to be had by ‘Bama’s front, both in creating negative plays and forcing turnovers off the snap.
This is a gut-check game for the Tide’s defensive front though. Until they prove they can man up and stuff the run, they’re going to keep getting the tinhorn treatment.
And, now, let’s end on hoops. ‘Bama is getting an OV from the linchpin of the 2026 class — future lottery pick, SG, Caleb Holt:
Only a day after landing their first commitment of the 2026 recruiting class, a top Alabama Crimson Tide basketball target in the cycle has now reportedly changed his official visit date.
That prospect is Caleb Holt, who, according to a report from 247Sports’ Brett Greenberg, has moved up his official visit to Alabama to this upcoming weekend. Holt was previously scheduled to visit Tuscaloosa later this fall.
According to the 247Sports Composite recruiting rankings, Holt is considered as the nation’s No. 3 overall prospect in the 2026 class, as well as the No. 1 shooting guard nationally. A five-star recruit, Holt is also considered the No. 1 player in the state of Florida where he attends national powerhouse Prolific Prep.
Holt is also an Alabama native who originally began his prep career at Buckhorn High School.
Check out some of his highlights — all Holt does is create shots.
And, we leave you with your moment of levity…I genuinely can’t tell if Christopher Walken is the most unintentionally hilarious high functioning autist in the country, or has been taking the piss for four decades in the most elaborate practical joke in American history.
We’ll be back later with a preview of Wisconsin.
For now, have a great morning, Roll Tide.
Comments