Graphing the Tide vs South Carolina: the Tide was better (but this one was closer)

In our second week running, we have to discuss a disappointing performance from the Crimson Tide. Alabama entered this game as a three-touchdown favorite but barely squeaked out a 27-25 win against South Carolina. While not as disheartening as the prior week’s loss to Vanderbilt, it was still far from the dominant showing we’d expect from Alabama against an overmatched SEC opponent.

Interestingly, the advanced metrics have been more favorable to Alabama in both of these recent games, suggesting they were likely wins for the Tide. In a twist of irony, our metrics against South Carolina were actually less favorable than those against Vanderbilt, where we suffered the upset. This truly was a surprise, both in terms of pregame expectations and the actual play-by-play outcomes according to efficiency and explosiveness.

Box score

Similar to last week’s game against Vanderbilt, the box score was kinder to Alabama’s opponent than to the Tide. Alabama barely squeaked this one out, 27 to 25, and actually underperformed on several key metrics:

• Total Yards: South Carolina outgained Alabama by about 60 yards
• Rushing Yards: South Carolina had more, with a higher yards per rush
• Passing Yards: South Carolina had more, with more attempts
• First Downs: South Carolina had more
• Third Down Conversions: South Carolina was 7 for 14 (50%), slightly higher than Alabama

Alabama did edge out South Carolina in yards per pass, but not by much. Both teams had fairly high yards per pass averages.

One particularly needling stat was South Carolina’s third-down conversion rate. While 50% isn’t astronomical, it’s important to note that the Gamecocks had zero third-down conversions in the first half. This means they had a massive improvement in the second half, converting a large majority of their third downs after the break.

Alabama continued to struggle with penalties, racking up 7 for 67 yards. That said, South Carolina didn’t do themselves any favors in this department either. Time of possession (TOP) was more balanced this week, but South Carolina still managed to edge out Alabama in this metric.

Not seeing graphs below? Tap here to fix it.

Team Success Rates over time (cumulative)

The SR and XR chart by team shows some interesting trends. Alabama actually started the first quarter well, with a relatively high SR that was higher than South Carolina’s. The Tide’s XR also started hot with some early passing plays on that good first drive. However, South Carolina bounced back towards the end of the first quarter, with both their explosiveness and efficiency rates catching up to Alabama’s cumulatively.

Interestingly, Alabama did pull away in terms of efficiency in the second quarter, especially when running the ball. At one point midway through the second quarter, Alabama had a nearly 25-point advantage in efficiency. However, this wasn’t paired with particularly high explosiveness – in fact, Alabama’s explosiveness was quite low during this period.

The second half saw South Carolina catching up again. By the end of the third quarter, South Carolina and Alabama had basically the same efficiency and explosiveness rates. This is not something we’ve seen much this year, even with Georgia’s big comeback a few weeks ago.

Alabama did manage to put together enough of a fourth quarter – barely – to hold onto the win. By the end of the game, Alabama finished with a 49% cumulative success rate, compared to South Carolina’s 45%. While not a major gap, this 4-point difference in overall efficiency can make a difference in a close game like this.

So, unlike some games where Alabama might have been less efficient and relied on crazy plays to pull out a win they shouldn’t have had, the Tide was at least slightly more efficient overall. However, it’s worth noting that South Carolina matched Alabama’s explosiveness rate (XR) at 10%, which is unusual this year. Even when Alabama hasn’t been the most efficient offense, our explosiveness has typically been great. The Jalen Milroe offense has tended to be boom or bust, which usually means we boom pretty often and have high explosiveness rates.

This 10% XR is both a low explosiveness rate in general for a team, and neither team was particularly explosive in this game. For Alabama, it’s about half the rate we’ve been expecting to see from the Milroe offense this year. If you want to blame one factor for why this game was closer than it should have been, you could perhaps point to our lack of explosiveness, which has been a common card for this offense all year. We just didn’t see it in this game, and maybe paid the consequence with a close, embarrassing nail-biter.

Rushing and Passing Success (cumulative)

Looking at the SR by play type chart, we see some interesting trends play out. Alabama had some relative balance in the first quarter with both running and passing working pretty well. We saw a few explosive passes, which is good, and a relatively balanced approach with both phases of the game contributing.

Things split in an interesting way in the second quarter. We’ve been used to seeing Alabama’s passing offense pick up and be the more efficient part of our offense this year, even when we were running the ball most of the time. Usually, even with slightly higher rushing rates, we were used to the passing offense being our best element, both in terms of explosiveness and efficiency or success rate.

However, in this game, especially in the second quarter and then in the fourth quarter, running the ball was what was saving us. In the second quarter, we see eight successful rushes in a row, including an explosive rush. This was a mix of Justice Haynes and then Jam Miller. The explosive run was a Jalen Milroe scramble, and there were two more Milroe scrambles and a Justice Haynes touchdown run sprinkled in there.

The running game slowed a little through very few attempts in the third quarter, but then we started running the damn ball again (RTDB!) in the fourth. We had some sustained high success there with a 60% rush SR through most of that quarter.

Interestingly, our passing offense was very boom or bust, with more “bust” than usual. Our 41% overall cumulative success rate for passing is about average, and it’s below what we’ve been seeing out of our passing offense so far this year. There were a few explosive passes in there – one to Kobe Prentice near halftime, one to Ryan Williams in the fourth quarter, and another to Germie Bernard late in the game to get that touchdown on that huge play that was our last passing attempt of the day.

This was a reverse of the usual for us. You couldn’t be blamed for telling the Tide to run the damn ball in the fourth quarter because it was working. Again, if you can point to an element of the game that wasn’t working here and why this game was so close, you could easily blame it on the passing game. And that also makes sense when you see a less explosive offense overall because the passing game wasn’t working as well as it usually does.

On the South Carolina side of this chart, they were passing well to begin with, with a few explosive ones in there too, which may have surprised the Alabama defense. Running the ball was not working very well for them until they finally brought up those averages in the middle of the second quarter. They were about balanced with some relative average to below-average success going into halftime.

Coming out of halftime, South Carolina committed to running the ball, and ran it damn well with five successful rushes in a row and then a few more later in the quarter. This brought their rushing rate up to a bit above average. Their passing success rate did slow down after that first quarter and basically hung around, except for a bit of success in the third quarter and going into the fourth. Things kind of trailed out after that, except for a few explosive passes that kept them in the game late.

Rushing rate (cumulative)

The rush rate chart shows a lot of balance for Alabama, even more than we’ve seen so far this season. We’ve been slightly on the rush-leaning side so far, and it looks like we were starting this game that way, but then went into a bit of a lull going into the second quarter. We also saw this in the third quarter, trying to air the ball out.

In the fourth quarter, Alabama restored its rushing mindset and brought that average back up to about 56% rush rate by the end of the game. This is about where we’ve seen Alabama landing, if not a little higher in rush rate, for all these games.

South Carolina’s effort was pretty balanced across the entire game. We had seen some commitment to passing going into the second half, likely due to some clock management and shenanigans there where they managed to steal a touchdown and another field goal from us late in the second quarter. But then they recommitted to running early in the second half, and you actually saw their running rate peak at about 57% early in the fourth quarter before they had to pass the ball a lot to try to beat Bama and end up with the upset (which they did not).

Success and Explosiveness by Play Type

This chart further emphasizes what we’ve discussed: Alabama’s rushing game was the strongest element of this game (in a reversal of the usual trends this season),.

Both teams seem to kind of pattern match each other in these metrics overall, except that Alabama was just a more efficient rushing team than South Carolina, and that was the most efficient phase of the game across both teams. Otherwise, Alabama was slightly more explosive on passing, but a little bit less efficient.

Play Map: Yards and Result by Play

Given how unexplosive these plays were, I actually had to adjust my code to not have the play map scale too small. You’ll notice more obviously now that neither Alabama nor South Carolina managed to produce a play beyond 36 yards, and that actually was a South Carolina pass late in the first half. Alabama’s longest pass was 34 yards for that touchdown to Germie Bernard at the end of the game to effectively seal the win.

Alabama’s drives were a mixed bag. Some, like the second drive and those before halftime, were complete failures. Others showed promise but often fizzled out. The Tide did manage a few respectable sustained drives, particularly in the fourth quarter, but it was far from the dominant offensive performance we’ve come to expect.

South Carolina’s chart shows more consistency, with several sustained drives that kept them in the game. Their ability to string together successful plays, even if not explosive ones, kept the pressure on Alabama throughout.

Success and Explosiveness by Quarter

The quarter-by-quarter breakdown reveals a game of momentum swings. Alabama started strong but saw their efficiency dip in the second quarter despite maintaining a lead on the scoreboard. The third quarter was all South Carolina, with the Gamecocks posting a 52% SR to Alabama’s below-average showing.

Thankfully, Alabama found their footing in the fourth quarter, outperforming South Carolina in efficiency while the Gamecocks relied more on explosive plays. This final quarter push was just enough for the Tide to secure the win.

SR, XR, and Play Count by Drive

It is both a good thing and a bad thing when you see more longer drives than usual out of this Alabama offense. We do have a few longer drives here, which is not something that we’re used to seeing out of the Milroe offense, with a nine-play drive to open up play and then a few seven-play drives, a nine-play one late in the game, and then a ten-play one as our final drive. This has been one of our few double-digit drives literally all year.

That’s a good thing from the sense that we’ve moved the chains a bit more than usual, but a bad thing from the sense that the reason we hadn’t been moving chains before was often because we were converting major explosive plays and not needing to eat up yards in few plays, as much as it was that sometimes we would get three-and-outs and things.

Otherwise, Alabama’s chart is a bit more respectable, but not grand, with the exception of a few drives that really failed out of the gate, especially those ones going into the half right in the middle of the chart.

On South Carolina’s side, there’s a certain build familiar for our defense. That is, the opponent comes in and puts together multiple double-digit drives and just eats up clock and manages to stay on the field with third-down conversions and such. South Carolina managed to scrape by a low-efficiency drive early that was twelve plays long, and then later a more respectable ten-play drive, and then actually a relatively successful 16-play drive later on, kind of coming out of the half.

Sixteen plays is still a really long drive, and we’re unfortunately getting used to seeing this out of this particular defense. Maybe that’s a “bend but don’t break” thing. Fortunately, after that 16-play drive, things started to look a lot different for South Carolina in the third and fourth quarters, with a few three-and-outs, a turnover, and then some slightly lower count drives with an eight-play drive and then a three-play drive at the very end. After they recovered an onside kick, it ended in an interception.

Success and Explosiveness by Down

This shouldn’t be particularly surprising that the underdog managed to stay in the game with late down conversions (again). Alabama was more efficient overall and was notably more efficient on first and second down. It was also more explosive on those downs. However, the third down efficiencies and explosiveness both favored the Gamecocks, which is how an overmatched opponent nears (or completes) an upset.

It probably would have been a loss, actually, in the end, if the South Carolina Gamecocks had ended up with a 2-for-2 fourth down conversion rate (100%) rather than getting stopped on the one that they did. Unfortunately for the Gamecocks, their successful fourth down conversion was explosive, but Alabama’s only fourth down attempt worked well enough, and this is perhaps where you could say the game was decided.

Success and Explosiveness in the Red Zone

At risk of repeating myself: when an underdog sticks around like this, it usually means they’re overperforming in the red zone, too, similar to what happened with Vanderbilt. Interestingly, Alabama also overperformed in the red zone here, and had a lot more attempts down there.

Despite Alabama being efficient in the red zone here, South Carolina was more efficient and was much more efficient than they were on the rest of the field. So here is where you see some more pattern matching between these teams. Even though Alabama had the slight edge on most plays, South Carolina made it count when it mattered most.

Success and Explosiveness by Distance to go

Once again, Alabama is converting with short yardage efficiency here, which should satisfy some Gumps out there. When we are within three yards of the line of scrimmage, we convert most of the time. This is an especially high number for this metric for us this week, but this is a trend that we’ve seen continuously.

South Carolina was also efficient from this position, but just not as efficient as Alabama, with only a 56% success rate with short yardage, and on fewer attempts as well.

Otherwise, you see, again, pattern matching mostly between these teams across all of these downs. Alabama showed the tendencies across these downs that we’ve been seeing all year, where at close yardage we do better and seem to have more options and have higher efficiencies, but in longer yardage, we’re not doing quite as well.

There is the seven to nine-yard gap that seems to be a funk that we get into. If early plays don’t work, if early down plays don’t work well and aren’t successful, we find ourselves in the seven to nine-yard range where we just really underperform and seem to lose our confidence. This showed up here, too, with that distance only showing about a 33% conversion rate.

Fortunately, South Carolina also was stuck in that kind of yardage pretty often and had an even worse conversion rate than we did. Though they did deliver some explosiveness here – it was, in fact, their most explosive distance for some reason.

Top Rushers

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

It’s both a good day and a bad day when Jalen Milroe is your leading rusher. He was actually very efficient in this one, after having collected the most attempts on the Alabama Crimson Tide. So he gets the image feature this week. He had ten successful attempts out of 14 attempts total, which is a high success rate. And one of those was explosive as well, so it’s a little bit less explosive than we’re used to seeing out of him, but this was, in general, good rushing decisions from Jalen.

Jam Miller was our leading running back here, but only had about a 50% success rate off of twelve attempts. Then Justice Haynes had a few good runs, but ended up being less efficient on lower volume as well, for whatever reason.

Raheim Sanders over on South Carolina had one explosive rush and was their leading rusher. And actually compiled a fairly efficient set here. This is especially, it seems, in the second half when they started finding their way running the ball, and this guy gave us some trouble late in the game.

Otherwise, South Carolina was not particularly efficient running the ball, especially from their quarterback when Dorian Sellers was only 4 for 12 in terms of success with a 33% success rate rushing the ball.

Top Passers

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

I would prefer to see Jalen have a similar tendency that we’ve seen him usually have, which is that on fewer attempts than the opposing quarterback, he ends up with similar number of successful plays. That had not happened this time. He did have fewer attempts than the opposing quarterback here, but actually, he had a slightly higher explosive passing rate. Otherwise, he had fewer successful catches, a similar number of unsuccessful short catches, and five incompletions and two interceptions as well.

So this is really not a good line for Jalen, even though he did find success here and there where he needed in terms of those explosive passes and things.

Dorian Sellers was not exactly very efficient himself, and also threw an interception there at the end of the game, thankfully. But he basically looks like he had Jalen Milroe’s line here, but with more attempts and with one fewer interception, which almost cost us this game.

Top Receivers

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

I’m pleased to put Germie Bernard in the image for the first time since the USF game, given his four successful catches, with two of those being explosive and one of those, as you recall, being really important. For those of you that watched the game, you did see Germie drop a pass or two, at least one of which you could argue he should have come down with, so I do this with some hesitation. But he did catch our leading receiver here in terms of successful catches, and did get us that last touchdown, so I’ve got to give him credit there.

Ryan Williams wasn’t quite as present as usual and didn’t have his usual long explosive play in this one, but he did have three successful catches, one explosive one to pair with one short, unsuccessful one.

We got both the backs involved, with Justice Haynes and Jam Miller both catching balls out of the backfield for successful catches. However, the tight ends were passed to with CJ Dippre having two catches and then Josh Cuevas having one, but none of them caught a successful pass, which is disappointing after having seen the tight ends be more involved the last few weeks of the game.

A surprise key recipient here was Cole Adams, who was injured a little bit early in the year, but who started showing up on kick or punt returns in a bigger way, and came down with two explosive catches in this game. This is huge and the biggest line we’ve seen from him.

Unfortunately, we did not have very much passing diversity here and really didn’t pass the ball very much in general. There are only seven names appearing in this list this week, even including Jam Miller catching only a single catch. That’s as opposed to ten names appearing on the South Carolina side of the ball where they were throwing to all kinds of recipients. On the South Carolina side, they had five receivers bring in explosive catches, which is great catch diversity and shows probably a pretty creative gameplan that we had some trouble with.

I was disappointed watching it live and really wish that we would see some of the efficiencies and the really high explosiveness that we saw earlier in this season. I am glad that we ended up winning a game here where we were again the more efficient team. But after the turnovers and low probability events like close catches and onside kick recoveries, it was good to see Alabama still prevail, even in the face of another potential upset this week.

Honestly, having charted both of these games, if you had told me we would lose one of these games, given the charts, I would absolutely guess that we had lost this South Carolina game rather than losing the Vanderbilt game. That Vanderbilt game showed a lot better performance out of Alabama, and we really should have won that game if it weren’t for an odd set of late down conversions, turnovers, and just other puzzling moments.

That being said, given that these have been weaker performances, I’m happy that we didn’t face the worst path here of losing both of these games despite leading in efficiency on both of them, so I’ll try to appreciate that.

I hope that some of Tennessee’s recent failures and near-failures also show that this could be an ugly game next week against them and that there’s not necessarily a team strongly favored there. So best of luck helping the team get their heads together and really focus for an opponent that shouldn’t be overlooked in Tennessee next week.

Roll Tide, and let’s hope for a more convincing performance in the coming weeks!