We learned a lot in Week 1 of the college football season, with some eye-opening results in some of the marquee matchups of the weekend. LSU upset Clemson on the road, Ohio State held firm against Texas and Miami gritted its teeth to get a tough win over Notre Dame. However, no result was as surprising as No. 8 Alabama losing by two touchdowns to Florida State.
The Crimson Tide came into the game with plenty of ammunition and should have had a chip on their shoulder after all the trash talk thrown their way from Seminoles quarterback Tommy Castellanos, but that was not the case. Throughout the game, Alabama got dominated at the line of scrimmage and repeatedly had poor effort in pursuit on defense.
It was jarring to see that from the Crimson Tide, who had built a brand on excelling at those two things under Nick Saban. Now, however, Saban is gone and Kalen DeBoer is in as the head coach, and his seat is already getting hot.
On Monday, DeBoer addressed the lack of effort that he saw on Saturday, via Kennington Lloyd Smith III of the Associated Press.
“These are great kids with high character, they want it bad,” DeBoer said. “It's about showing them, sometimes they already know. Intentional is a word I use a lot, I'll use it a lot more this week.”
There's no question that Alabama has plenty to clean up before taking the field again, both from an execution standpoint and an effort standpoint. Both areas were lacking on Saturday against a fired up Florida State squad that was playing some great football, and the Tide got run off the field as a result.
Things will get a bit easier for Alabama in the next few weeks, as it rounds out its non-conference slate with matchups against Louisiana Monroe and Wisconsin. However, DeBoer will have to have his squad playing its best football by Week 5 when the SEC slate gets underway against No. 5 Georgia down in Athens.
