Alabama DC Kirby Smart: Tide 'did not respect' Cardale Jones entering Sugar Bowl
Alabama was on a roll entering the inaugural College Football Playoff, coming in as the overall No. 1 team in the country and riding an eight-game winning streak.
However, the Tide fell flat on their faces in the Sugar Bowl, coming away from their national semifinal game with a 42-35 loss to Ohio State, beaten by a quarterback who entered preseason camp as a third-stringer.
Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart spoke about that game in an appearance on 680 The Fan in Atlanta.
"I've coached about 15 years - it was the most different situation we’ve ever had because of the quarterback situation," Smart said, as transcribed by FOX Sports. "So you’ve got one quarterback on tape (Braxton Miller), then you’ve got another quarterback on tape (J.T. Barrett), then you’ve got one game on the quarterback (Cardale Jones).
"And looking back, we have exit interviews with our players, and when you look in hindsight, I asked every kid, Landon Collins, Nick Perry, Jarrick Williams, the really smart seniors on our team, I said 'Where did we go wrong? What did we do wrong?'
"All three of them said they did not respect the quarterback, and our job as the coaches was to make them respect the quarterback. Well they heard from the media, they heard from ESPN, they heard from everybody that he was a third-string quarterback. How can a third-string quarterback beat Alabama? We didn’t promote him enough and they didn’t value his talents enough, and he came in - we thought he was a really good passer, well he ran the ball well, too. We had not seen him run the ball - and not a runner like Blake (Sims) and not a runner like their other guy, just big."
To get a better understanding of how Ohio State attacked the Alabama defense, Nick Saban brought in Houston head coach and former Buckeyes offensive coordinator Tom Herman to explain how he gameplanned against the Tide defense.
"I'll tell you the best thing we did, and I give coach (Nick) Saban a lot credit, we went directly to (Herman)," Smart said. "We flew him in. We said 'Hey, look, we want to meet with you. You know us better than anybody. You spent four weeks getting ready for us. What’s our tendencies? What do we do wrong? What do you think?' And he was honest with us, he just told us what he thought. It was very valuable for us."
Alabama fans will have to keep their fingers crossed that the lessons learned in that meeting will keep the Tide from allowing another 537 yards of total offense like they did in the Sugar Bowl.