What happened to Alabama's offense against Tennessee?

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — For much of this season, the Alabama offense was the strength of the team.

Outside of last week’s struggles against South Carolina, the Crimson Tide offense had been borderline unstoppable, scoring 35+ points in the first five games of the season. Even in the loss to Vanderbilt a couple weeks ago, the offense scored five touchdowns on extremely limited possessions. That loss was much more on the defense than the offense.

But in Saturday’s 24-17 loss to Tennessee, the exact opposite was true. When the defense showed up, it was the offense that vanished entirely.

Of course, 17 points were a season-low. The offense looked rattled to the core trying to handle the noise of the Neyland Stadium crowd, and there was a complete incapability to sustain and finish drives.

The Crimson Tide had 14 drives in the game, seven of which ended in punts. Two of those drives ended in turnovers, both thrown by quarterback Jalen Milroe, and then add in a turnover on downs and a missed field goal to go with it.

What’s worse, is the Alabama defense created three takeaways for the offense, and the offense scored zero points off those opportunities.

“I gotta take full ownership of that,” Milroe said of the offense’s struggles. “When it comes to communication up front, communication to the guys around, I’ve got to do better on my end. Playing with better detail, better communication up front, and allowing our guys to line up properly with the communication. That’s something that going back, that’s something we’re going to build on and get better at, and something I acknowledge as we’re playing. It’s all about rebuilding, all about regrouping, and acknowledging we were not at our best today.”

Milroe played easily his worst game of the season, coming right of the heels of his previous worst game of the season against South Carolina last week. He completed 25-of-45 passes, good for just 56 percent, with one touchdown and the aforementioned two interceptions.

His accuracy was off all night, repeatedly overthrowing receivers beginning with the opening series and carrying that trend through the rest of the game.

“That’s something I can definitely improve on, just giving our guys a chance,” Milroe said. “They’re very explosive with the ball, so just putting it in the range of them and putting trust in them because I know they’re gonna make big play if the ball’s in their range. That’s something I’ve got to improve on.”

For much of the game, it felt like Milroe was keyed in on only one receiver, freshman phenom Ryan Williams. Williams had a solid game, catching eight balls for 73 yards and a touchdown, but Milroe seemed to force passes to Williams before reading the field for other options on multiple occasions.

Williams finished the game with 18 targets, three times more than Alabama’s next leading target-getter, which was running back Justice Haynes with six. Wide receivers Germie Bernard and Kendrick Law had just five targets apiece.

After the game, head coach Kalen DeBoer was asked whether or not he thinks Williams received too many targets throughout the game.

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, I think that some of them, there is an intentional element to making sure he’s part of the game plan. And then some of it was just the progressions and where it ended up,” DeBoer said. “Unfortunately, we just had a couple misses, right? If we hit one or two of those – the interception early in the game, we had a good little rhythm right there. I mean, some of those hurt. But you have to have confidence in your players to continue to go back and go make the next play. And we obviously have a lot of belief in every one of our players. He’s a guy that can go make those plays anytime. So we gotta continue to make sure he’s a strong part of the game plan.”

Compounded with the struggles in the passing game, Alabama’s run game was nonexistent. Across three ball carrier, Milroe, Haynes, and Jam Miller, Alabama had 34 carries for 75 yards, good for an abysmal 2.2 yards per carry.

The inability to run the ball put the offense in a number of difficult 3rd-and-long situations, which needed to be avoided with the game Milroe was playing.

“They’re a physical defense up front. We knew we had to have a mix of run and pass and try to use J-Mill in the run game, as well. But just trying to get a flow, trying to find times where you can get in a rhythm. The penalties hurt us to where you’re behind the sticks,” DeBoer said. “You’re trying to stay patient. You’re trying to – even at the end, not the last drive but the second-to-last drive – try to stay with it and know that if you can just put one play on top of the other, you can move the ball down the field. But when you don’t have the explosives, it’s just too hard to stack plays a whole length of the field. You have to add some type of explosive play.”

And yes, this Tennessee team has one of the best defenses in the country. There’s no denying that. But it’s also true that Alabama has had success against a stout defense earlier this season. It’s almost unfathomable that this offense hung 28 points on Georgia in a quarter and a half just a month ago considering the way it’s played as of late.

But that’s the reality of it, and a reality this team is going to have to find a way to change if it wants to stay alive for any College Football Playoff conversation moving forward.