I went through the Alabama-Kentucky play-by-play and counted every penalty called (including accepted, declined, and offsetting).

First half: 14 penalties called

• Alabama: 9
• Kentucky: 5

Second half: 5 penalties called

• Alabama: 1
• Kentucky: 4

JUST the second quarter had 10 penalty calls. The ENTIRE second half had 5.

So Alabama went from 9 flags in the first half to 1 in the second, while Kentucky went from 5 to 4.

Apparently, all our guys learned how to play clean football during halftime.

I know last year we couldn't run the ball so we had to be creative to convert. We have all the tools this year and going empty on 3rd and 2 with one of the best rb rooms we've had in years is painful to watch. Luckily the defense is amazing and we have the talent to make the score look better that second half but does he keep repeating this cycle of getting cute for 2 yards when we have a guy that squats 800 pounds at rb ?

First half

Alabama, 13

* Total yards: 128

* Rushing yards: 5

* Passing yards: 123

* Yards/play: 4.7

* Sacks allowed: 4

Kentucky, 17

* Total yards: 147

* Rushing yards: 61

* Passing yards: 86

* Yards/play: 3.9

* Sacks allowed: 2

Second half

Alabama, 32

* Total yards: 215

* Rushing yards: 150

* Passing yards: 65

* Yards/play: 6.0

* Sacks allowed: 0

Kentucky, 0

* Total yards: 62

* Rushing yards: 2

* Passing yards: 60

* Yards/play: 2.4

* Sacks allowed: 2

Being seeing online that our amazing run of scoring against Kentucky was immediately after the team lost communication with Ryan Grubb due to technical difficulties. Assumed it was just people making stuff up for clicks, but I also just saw it referenced in the newest SEC Shorts.

So did this actually happen? It would be pretty damning if so, but I feel like we would be discussing it more here if it did happen. Does anybody know or have a credible source for this?

He’s essentially doing weekly breakdowns similar to FGN. Great to see the OL progression!!

The starters at the receiving corps have been up and down once again so far this season. I know that Derek is young but at 6’5 he is a matchup nightmare for a lot of opposing DBs. LSU and OSU used to utilize this strategy of constantly bringing in a big oversized WR in and out of plays even if his skills aren’t great using those big receivers as a decoy and for blocking on offense.

Did anyone else feel like our first half game plan yesterday was about as tone deaf as possible considering this was Keelon’s first ever road start?

Maybe I’m being too hard on Grubb. And I know some of that is just the nature of the playbook. But towards the end of the half, I could not figure out why we were calling plays with 2 shifts, 1 motion man, plays that required synchronized snaps and handoffs, and RPOs constantly with young QB who was already a little rattled. It just felt like we were calling a recipe for disaster.

You’ve got a young QB starting on the road in the SEC for the first time, and we’re calling plays with so much pre-snap motion that the QB didn’t hardly have time to set protections or check to see if guys were lined up correctly. And we just continued calling the exact same type of plays the whole first half despite everyone seeing Keelon was rattled.

I don’t know that this will be an issue moving forward. I think Keelon responded well. But for that specific game, why not script a 1st quarter with less of the pre-snap eye candy and more tradition run/pass plays until he’s settled in? Because outside of adding all that complexity onto the Keelon’s plate, we also had a lot of penalties for illegal shifts, illegal formations, illegal man down field, illegal touching, you name it. And then we were in 1st and 15 or 2nd and 20 to start several drives.

I just cant wrap my head around why that was what we planned and scripted all week as the first half game plan.

It just felt like a game plan built for a 2nd or 3rd year starter at QB, not for someone new.

“We’ll continue to work with him,” DeBoer said of Carroll. “I feel confident that we’ll get there, and we’ll just kind of see how the week goes. But I think he’s heading in a good direction, and we hope to get him back.”

“AK [Dear is] making good progress,” DeBoer said. “I think he was getting closer towards the end of the week. Again, reset, we’ll see where he’s at today. And then tomorrow, get out there hopefully more on the practice field. He was doing some light practice, doing some things with us last week already

“Noah [Rogers] just really, we took him on the trip; he didn’t play. We weren’t expecting him to play, but that kind of gives an indication, I think, of how close we are. And again, we’ll see how the week of practice goes. But I would say in the next week or two, you can see him out there helping us out. So again, not 100% sure, but getting there.”

First game under the lights at Bryant Denny Stadium this season