We deserved to lose and here is why.
Let's say you're a baseball team on the cusp of your first World Series in 80 years. You blow game 6 because your crippled first baseman let a ball get by in the 9th. You still have game 7, but your shitty bullpen, which has been an issue all year long, let's you down and you lose that one too. Do you blame your first baseman? Do you blame the guy who had him out there in the first place, knowing how poor a fielder he was? Or do you simply accept that your weaknesses will catch up with you when you play good competition?
That's us in a nutshell. You can easily say we lost because Colt got hurt 4 plays into the game, and if you function along the lines of a normal human being you probably will for the rest of your life. I plan on it. It's the correct route to take.
However, it's hard for me to leave it there because we were so damn close to winning anyway. Once Gilbert settled down and Greg Davis realized he had no choice other than to trust him, we played well enough to win. In fact I'd say that our third quarter was the best football we played all year. But ultimately, when you're playing against the house, you'll lose.
We knew we had no WR depth outside of Shipley, and the 17 drops showed up at the worst possible time.
We knew our offense as a whole was highly mistake prone, and they, as usual, set us back with penalties. Our first TD was wiped out because a WR didn't take two steps forward.
We knew our 27 game starter at FS was worthless against the run. Go watch every Alabama run over 15 yards and try to find the common thread. I'll wait . . . see? Blake Gideon was unblocked every time and didn't even come close to making a stop. They ran around him like he wasn't there, and might as well not have been. Every. Single. One.
We knew DJ Monroe had stone hands, it's why they moved him from WR in the first place. Sure the shovel pass is low risk, but we made it higher risk with that decision.
Do we win with Colt? Probably. Do we win without that shovel pass? Maybe. We got two gifts on kickoff returns that we did little with, so it's hard to say Alabama got luckier bounces than we did. Ultimately the game ended the only way it could have -- a mental error by the OL in an empty set in an obvious passing situation. If that doesn't sum up the entire season then I don't know what does.
And by the way, we win if Colt plays.