Written by Ell | 17 November 2008

With the Tide enjoying its second off week of the season, there won't be much to report on the practice front. It will be another week of going back to the fundamentals, and getting reps for guys who don't normally get them during game week preparation. There were two big pieces of information from today's press conference, though: Will Oakley's Alabama career is likely over. I wonder if Oakley lived with a family of 13 cats underneath a ladder in home full of broken mirrors. He fell down a couple of stairs and injured his collarbone. He will likely have surgery that will end his football career. If so, he'll end up with 21 receptions for 264 yards in 32 games played. His true on-field contribution has been as a blocker, though. In late game situations where Bama is looking to run clock, you would typically see Oakley and Stover at the wide out spots, sealing the corner for the Tide ball carrier. Rolando McClain evidently had a minor surgery. It seems as though he cut his hand pretty severely during Saturday's game. He went to the locker room, had it stitched up, and came back out to dominate. The surgery today was, according to Coach Saban, used to clean up any debris that might have gotten into the wound. This was a preventative procedure, hoping to avoid any infection. If the Auburn game were being played tomorrow Rolando would play, so there's no doubt he'll be ready to go in a week and a half. Don't be surprised to see him possibly be in black during some practices this week, though. There has been no further news regarding last Thursday's incident involving Rolando. The story as we've been told is that Rolando was attempting to go to a party at the DTD house behind Bryant Hall. When he was refused entry, an argument ensued in which Rolando was called the "magic" word. He ignored it, and turned to leave. He was called that word again as he was leaving, and this time he couldn't ignore it. I can't really say that I blame him, and I doubt we'll see anything else come out of this. Coach Saban indicated that Roy Upchurch and Earl Alexander, who both missed the MSU game, should be ready to practice this week. Upchurch dressed, but did not play, while Alexander was not in uniform. Coach Saban sent out a call to the Bama fans to show up loud on Saturday night, and this is what he had to say about how we performed:

Just to clean up the last game, I thought our players did a really good job of competing their way through the game and pushing through the game. The fans and atmosphere were great and I think in helping them to do that. I really appreciate the fans responding the way they did and they had a significant impact on our team’s emotional ability to compete in the game like they did.

Drew Davis was named one of the offensive players of the week by the coaching staff for the second consecutive week. Given Bama's problems with pass rush by both LSU and MSU last year, I'd say these were huge, and noteworthy performances by Drew the last two weeks. Let's hope he has another against Auburn. Joining him as players of the week from the coaches are Travis McCall (offense), Rolando McClain and Brandon Deaderick (defense), and Javier Arenas, Rashad Johnson, PJ Fitzgerald, and Leigh Tiffin (special teams). With no game to prepare for this week, the coaches started a little advance scouting on Florida. No, they are not in any way looking past Auburn. The Tide coaches spent time during the pre-season preparing for Auburn because they were on the schedule. Because we didn't know until a week ago that we would be playing Florida, that preparation was not done. Here's how the Coach put it:

I don’t think we do game plans that far in advance.  We gather information so that we can make evaluations. We can’t practice against something that’s different if we haven’t never seen it or looked at it, or we haven’t advanced it.  If we have an opponent coming up that we didn’t plan to play on our regular schedule then we have to do the due diligence to expose our players to what they need to see in a time like this, if it’s different from what they’ve played, and if it’s not different we don’t mess with it.  We knew we would not address it until now, so the due date was today.

If you were like me, you found it odd that both Jeramie Griffin and Demetrius Goode got carries in the fourth quarter Saturday, while Terry Grant only saw action on special teams. There was a reason, according to Coach Saban:

He got a thigh bruise on special teams and actually played on special teams.  We did not put him in the game as a runner because of that.

If anything of note happens in practice this week, we'll let you know.

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