Roman Harper states 'everybody's pissed off' at Alabama

Following Alabama‘s second loss of the season one prominent alumnus sees a glaring area of weakness for the team. That’s former defensive back Roman Harper.

Now an analyst for ESPN, Harper joined the College GameDay Podcast and provided his thoughts on the Crimson Tide for host Rece Davis.

“I mean the elephant’s in the room, let’s address it,” Harper said. “Everybody’s pissed off, Rece. Alabama fans are ticked off, because the standard is the standard. It’s not moving. Especially when you beat Georgia. When you beat Georgia they put the blinders on like it’s championship or bust.”

In some ways, Harper believes the Georgia game might have served to further increase the pressure on first-year coach Kalen DeBoer. Praise ramped up to a real high in the aftermath of that win.

The Tide fans were rolling on Cloud 9. Then it all came crashing down. Whereas had the order of results been inverted a bit, perhaps DeBoer wouldn’t be quite so under the gun.

Harper hit on that and Alabama’s chief problem right now.

“So if you lost to Georgia and beat Vandy, the emotions are little bit different, but they’re not,” Harper said. “So it’s all about the attention to detail when I’m looking at this defense and the offense. You can’t have penalties like they do. Like that’s a discipline thing. And you’re in a loud environment, but nobody cares. Other teams come in there and play in these things and don’t have 15 penalties. And you’ve got to get that cleaned up. And this is multiple games where they’ve had double-digit penalties. That’s all discipline right there. So you understand hustle penalties, some holdings will happen, but the little things over and over and over again, you can’t allow that to happen.”

That’s one problem.

The other problem is that the Alabama defense hasn’t been very good in losses to Vanderbilt and Tennessee. The unit was a little more staunch against the Volunteers, but still couldn’t manage to come up with the stop needed with the game on the line.

“The other thing is that when I watch them play defensively, it all comes down to discipline,” Harper said. “Eye discipline, specifically. When your eyes are right, your body will naturally do right. These are all coaching nuances that I’ve learned over time. If I’m taught where my eyes need to be at, whether I go from one to two, two to one, two to three, and I know what to do… OK, when this person does this, my body, my eyes go here.

“And I transfer my eyes and my body will keep up putting myself in the right position to defend the next play, because offenses build routes off of attacking where you want to be at. They’re trying to build something, put something in front of you, because they want to throw something behind you. And so it’s levels, it’s different concepts that keep rolling out there, and Alabama’s not defending them well.”

What has happened now is that the blueprint to beat Alabama is out there. It’s on tape twice.

Vanderbilt, in a lot of ways, closed down the easy path for Alabama. Now it’s the hard way the rest of the year. And that means any weaknesses will be exposed if they aren’t shored up in a hurry.

“When you don’t defend something well, Rece, other teams see that and they’re going to attack you,” Harper pointed out. “They’re not just going to line up in it, they’re going to get a motion, a big shift, they’re going to build it a different way and the same play’s going to show up. You look up and you’re like, ‘Man, I just got that a week ago.’ And sometimes you won’t get it for a week, but in two weeks it shows back up. So that’s what you’ve got to learn how to defend. And until you fix the leak, things will continue to attack it, and that’s what I’m seeing out of Alabama’s defense right now.”

He even pointed to a more particular part of the defense as evidence.

“As far as alignment, No. 2 through the zone on wheel routes, things like that, like that should not change,” Harper said. “That has not changed as far as defensive concepts. But I don’t like that Alabama’s secondary has too much eye contact on the quarterback and not enough on the guys that are actually running the routes. The quarterback’s not going to throw you the ball, so it only does you so good to look at the quarterback. So you’ve got to understand where the routes are coming from, where are people at in relation to where you are in your zone, and then that’s how you steal plays and intecept the football.”

Can Alabama figure it out and right the ship in time to steal a College Football Playoff berth? That remains to be seen.