The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Texas' Bijan Robinson & Breaking down the Alabama Upset

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

On this week's Breaking the Huddle, Joel Klatt talks to Texas RB Bijan Robinson about Heisman buzz, and the upcoming game against Oklahoma State. Joel also goes through his Top 10 Rankings, and breaks down tape from Alabama's loss to Texas A&M. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome into breaking the huddle. Big week after an amazing Saturday of college football. I'm Joel. Glad. This show is always brought to you by Dr. Pepper. It is the one fans deserve. Let's get into my top 10. I've got a breakdown of the Alabama, Texas A&M game. We've got Bejohn Robinson on the show. It's loaded. Let's get right into it. Let's start with my almost top 10. These teams just didn't quite get into the top 10. Oregon squeaking in there. I'm not as high. on them as the AP in particular with some of their injuries. There's Oklahoma State, have them this week, Notre Dame and that comeback win. And Coastal, I still see you, Coastal. By the way, Grayson McCall, he should be on your Heisman list. There's no doubt. Now let's get into the top 10 teams as I see them right now. I'm going to start with number 10, Kentucky.

Kentucky is 6 and 0. Mark Sto's done an amazing job. This is the first time Kentucky has been 6 and 0 since, what, 1960, when Bear Bryant was the coach. If you're doing something for the first time since Bear Bryant did it at your school, then you're doing something really? Right, Kentucky fans, be proud of your team, although you've got a tough one this week. There's no doubt about that. Now we go 9 through 6, and this is where we get the Big 10 East.

Penn State, even after a loss, they go back to 9. Remember, I thought they were dominating that game against Iowa. Clifford gets injured. Probably would have won that game if he stays in there, but they didn't, so they fall down to number 9. Michigan State at 6-0. How about Michigan State? Mel Tucker is doing some work right now. Think about what they were able to do on the offensive side of the football this last week.

Peyton Thorne, Jalen Naylor, the wide receiver, and Kenneth Walker. Kenneth Walker, the nation's leading rusher. This dude is putting in some serious work. In fact, think about this, folks. They did something, albeit against Rutgers, but they did something that's only been done five times in the history of our sport. They had a 300-yard passer, Peyton Thorne. They had a 200-yard rusher, Kenneth Walker, and a 200-yard receiver. all in the same game doing work.

Michigan State. Way to go. All right. Number seven, Michigan survives on the road against Nebraska. How about that fumble, by the way. Brad Hawkins strips and recovers that ball from Adrian Martinez. They're able to kick a field goal. Harbaugh stays undefeated.

They're 6-0. That team plays hard. Really love watching them. At number six, maybe the scariest team to face outside of Georgia in the country, five-and-one, Ryan Day's Ohio State Buckeyes, because of what they're doing on the offensive side. I mean, this team right now is lighten it up on the offensive side. In fact, C.J. Stroud, they're a quarterback.

Since he came back from injury, 10 touchdowns, no interceptions. They're the top total offense in the country. They're in the top three in scoring offense. You don't want to see that offense right now, and the defense has gotten much better. In fact, they've had a few pick sixes over the course of the last few games. Now, let's get into the top five as I see them. Alabama, they go down to number five. Could have fallen a little bit more.

I still believe in Alabama. Why? Because they've got Nick Sabin as their coach. And really it was about. execution and some coaching, some huge coaching heirs, not from Sabin, but from his offensive staff. More on that next segment. We're going to break down that loss to Texas A&M. Then we get into the top four. Oklahoma. What a game that was for OU. I mean, are you serious? They were down 28-7. It did not look good. And then they go to the true freshman. The number one quarterback in

the class, at least before Quinn Ewer's reclassified, Caleb Williams comes into the game. and did some serious work. How about this? 16 to 25, 300 total yards and three touchdowns. It was right from the get-go, by the way. He came in, and it was an electric run that really sparked everything for Oklahoma. Now, folks, Oklahoma fans,

I know you've heard me sit here and say, listen, this has not been Rattler's fault. The offensive line played poorly, and that certainly was the case against West Virginia, and I had the evidence to prove it in that film session. But now what you see is the element of the quarterback run that is going to help moving. forward the Oklahoma run game. Remember, against Texas, they had 600 yards of total offense,

339 of them on the ground, partly because Williams threatens the defense with his legs. Now, who's the quarterback moving forward? Why not both? Why not both? You see, folks, when you got two players that are playing the exact same role or style of offense, I would be the first to tell you you've got to choose one and you've got to move forward as a coach. But when the two players are different enough or they can serve different purposes within the offensive scheme, I think both can play and both will play.

I think the reason Lincoln Riley hasn't come out and said, this is my starter, one or the other, is because he knows both of these guys are going to play. When Caleb Williams does to the defense, what he can do to the defense in the run game, and Rattler can still threaten them in the passing game, you've got something where you've got a more complete offense if both of them are involved.

And the evidence of that was the second half when during the comeback and maybe the most important snap of the game, Lincoln Riley went with who? Spencer Rattler. He put him back in the game cold. Why? Because he's better suited to make the sprint right throw in the goal line for the two-point play to Drake Stoops. So now you have a more complete offense. So OU fans, before you get into who's QB1 and Hugh's QB2, I think we might just have QB-A and QB, 1A, 1B. I think both guys can play because they serve a different purpose and a different role that offense. Let's get into the top three really quickly because Cincinnati is doing some work. That team is the highest group of five ranked team that we've seen in the college football

playoff era. They still have a ranked team on the schedule on SMU, so they're going to hope SMU continues to win. They're doing it with defense and great leadership and play from their quarterback, Desmond Ritter. And then two and one, I've got Iowa at number two and Georgia number one. Iowa folks, we were there. That was an amazing environment. And by the way, they don't win that game without their punter. Their punter was amazing. Torrey Taylor, how about what he was doing to the Penn State offense, pinning them inside the 10-yard line? This was the first one, just throw some backspin on it. He pins him inside the 10-yard line. That directly led to three points because they were able to pick off a pass on the next snap. How about this? Bam, lands on the one and just, I mean,

fortuitous bounce, yes, clearly with the football, but he's doing some amazing things with the punt, in particular with the team that's playing some of the best defense in all of college football. Now we move into the fourth quarter and we see what Tori Taylor was able to do. Pinning Penn State back inside the 10-yard line. This is perfectly executed. He punts it. They actually catch it inside the five. He gives them enough air where they're able to catch that ball inside the five.

And then this one was great effort by the gunner, Ivory Kelly Martin. This guy right here, he's the backup running back, number 21, Ivory Kelly Martin. He had an ACL injury in December. He comes back from that. Now he's healthy and he's busting his butt on punt team in order to down the ball inside the five. If they're not able to do that, then this team does not have a short field to score and ultimately win the game. Their punter, Tori Taylor, essentially won the game for them for the Iowa Hawkeyes. Georgia's number one because they're dominant.

Their six is known. We can get into them at a later date. Obviously, I told you last segment, we wanted a breakdown. We wanted to look under the hood of that A&M win over Alabama. It was a crazy win. I mean, certainly not an outcome that any of us were expecting. But what was it? Was it more about what A&M did do?

Yeah, certainly you could talk a lot about what A&M did do. But you could also talk about what Alabama didn't do. So let's start to look at Alabama now. And I think to look at this game through a historical lens is important. So let's look at it through the defensive lens. Because I think the defense is going to get a lot of blame for Alabama losing that game to Texas A&M. A&M under Zach Calzada, the backup quarterback, had not done a ton offensively in the last few weeks. And then all of a sudden, they're able to score on Alabama.

must be a defensive problem. And the numbers would suggest that that's accurate. Let me show you what I'm talking about. Now, there's a lot of numbers up here. I understand that. But basically, let me tell you what you're looking at. This is Nick Saban's tenure, 2007, all the way down to 2021. Here's the points per game given up by their defense on the year in every one of those years,

and then their FBS rank. And this tells a really good story. The first year of his tenure, they weren't a great team. They gave up 22 points per game that was 27th in the country. And then from that point on, what you see is a team that does not give up over 20 points, 14, 11, 13, 18, 8. I mean, 8, that's ridiculous. Look at all of that. You just littered with great defenses.

Here, what you'll see is a defense that is never outside of the top 10 in scoring defense until we see this adjustment into the offensive age of football from Nick Sabin. Now what you see is that as the possessions increase, the points per game, start to increase over the last three years. It's gone up just a little bit, 18.1, 18.6, 19.4. And then now here in 2021, is it the defense's fault? 22 points per game. That's 40th in the country. So they've gone from 12th, 13th, 13th, and now 40th in the country.

Well, what if it's not the defense's fault? As much as it is, it's just the product of the style of football in which they're playing, which puts a premium on execution on the offense. So maybe the margin for the offense, margin for error, is just shrinking a little bit. So now every time they get into a position to score, it's just more important. That was the case against Texas A&M. Let's go to the film and look at these two situations, one in the second quarter, one in the fourth quarter,

where they had first and goal inside the five-yard line. Now, when we look at what they did on their first first and goal in the second quarter, you're going to see just a standard run play. This is an RPO where Bryce Young's going to read. the outside linebacker as well as the defensive end. And as they get with, he's just going to hand the football off to Brian Robinson. I think this is actually a pretty successful inside the five run play. He gets all the way down inside the two-yard line, basically to the one-a-half.

Now, this is good execution up front. Bryce Young makes the correct read. These two players get width. He's not going to throw the football to the outside. He's going to hand it off, and that's a first down play. So what are you going to do? You're going to come back on the next play, and you're going to continue to try to hammer the run game. This time out of the pistol formation, you've got the back in the backfield.

and now the tight end's got to come across the formation and block this defensive end so that the running back has the ability to get downhill and get into the end zone. But the problem comes in when the tight end is not running aggressively across the formation. This is really poor execution. The tight end stops and that pause, that moment of hesitation,

allows the running back not to get back to the back side and then the front side defensive end is able to chase him down because of this collision in the back side. field right here. See Robinson can't get back to the back end because there's hesitation in that moment of pause from the tight end. So poor execution. Okay, so now it's third down. So what do you got to do? Well, on third down, you probably have to throw the football and you're probably going to get man coverage from Texas A&M. So let's go to the third down snap. Now,

against man coverage, what you'd like to see is a formation that's not static, maybe a bunch set with motion and then you want to see rub routes out there. But that's not what you get from Alabama here. This is a really poor play call. What you have is a bunch of individual routes with no rubs in order to get windows or space for your players. Up top, they don't get a rub route. Down below, they're running a level route where someone's at the back end zone and the tight end is just running across. And what you get in that situation is a tough throw for the quarterback and an inability

to affect the defender. Let's look again at this play. If you go back to the beginning of this play, what you'll see is the static formation, static meaning that there's no motion and there's no movement. just going to sit there. You've got the man coverage. You see the man coverage on the outside. Again, no bunch routes, no rubs. See, number one right here, he should be coming across the field to at least give the linebacker the appearance that he's going to get picked so you get some separation. Now you can throw the tight end. There's no pick at the top. I want to pick at the bottom. I don't get it.

So the linebacker is able to cut the route in the small window and he picks off the past. You don't get any points. That's a really poor play call and a poor play design from Bill O'Brien, the offensive coordinator. Let's go now to the fourth quarter. Fourth quarter, you're going to have a read from the quarterback where he's either going to throw the bubble screen or he's going to run the football based on numbers. Now, snap of the football, he's got four over three. He can't throw the bubble. He should be running the run play with only five defenders in the run box.

He stares at the defensive end, five run players in the run box. He should hand that football off knowing he's got five offensive. linemen. That's the numbers that you're trying to equate. So here's the snap. He's got four over three. Now Bryce Young is looking at this. He stares at the defensive end. He should hand that football off. That should be a run play all day long. He snaps it out to the bubble screen on the outside. There's four A&M defenders out there. That's never going to work. So that's a poor decision from the quarterback. So now what are you going to do? Well, we're going to get back to the passing game because they weren't confident in the run game. So what are they doing on second down? Now they

finally do get the bunch sets and we are going to get the rub routes out of the wide receiver. Bunched at the bottom at the top you've got a nasty split with the wide receiver and the tight end. They're going to cross. So here's the rub route. Finally, we're going to get some space. Nope. Poor execution again. Alabama runs into each other because the rub route's trying to go too quickly. They've got to get the right depth and the right timing so that they don't run into each other. Now that's an incompletion and we're bringing up third down. So we've seen poor play calls. We've seen poor reads from the quarterback. We've seen poor execution from the tight end group, both in the run blocking and in the past game. So what do we get now on third down? So now it's like, man,

we got to have it. It's third down. Let's go to the next play. What do we see on third down? It's like the same as what we saw prior. Static formation, no movement, no rubs, no picks, low percentage throw out into the flat. This is a really poor play call. You've got to get this formation condensed, get some movement, and maybe leverage the defenders in the man coverage. A&M is able to make the play here because this is a tight window throw on the outside. Probably still should have been made, but it's not. It's incomplete. The freshman can't complete it, and A&M is able to hold for a field goal. So that's what happened in the ball game with A&M getting the upset over Alabama. The defense is not providing the

margin for air offensively that they have in the past. So what do you have to do? You have to capitalize when you're in the scoring area. In particular, we've got first and five, or excuse me, first and goal inside the five-yard line. Alabama did not capitalize in those situations. Poor decisions from the quarterback. Poor execution from the tight end group. Poor play call and play design from Bill O'Brien. That's what happened to Alabama on Saturday. And when that happens, you get beat. Welcome back in. My favorite player, at least right now in college football, I think I think is the best player in college football is at the top of my Heisman list.

Bejohn Robinson from the University of Texas joins us now. Bejohn, what's going on, man? How are you? Man, I'm doing awesome. You know, just blessed to be here, blessed to be here to talk to you, and just, you know, share some things. Hey, listen, I know I don't want to kick it off on the down note. You had an amazing game, including some epic runs. The run with the stiff arm was like, it was sensational. But how are you guys dealing with, you know, the fact that you didn't pull it out?

against Oklahoma. Take me into the kind of the team's mentality now as you guys face Oklahoma State this week. You know, we just we're just short-minded. You know, we're not really thinking about the Oklahoma game anymore. You know, we understand that we do want to play them, you know, moving forward. So we got to take care of everybody, you know, everybody else. We got to play up against going forward. So Oklahoma State's our main focus right now. And, you know, we understood that, you know, last week was a was a hard loss, but, you know, we can't think about that kind of stuff. And, you know, we just got to stay positive and make sure that, you know, we're coming into this week, you know, executing and just playing our brand of football. One of the things I talked about in the preseason was I thought you were the best running back in college football. And people were like, oh, you know, that's interesting.

There's a lot of guys out there. I was like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Like, he's ridiculously good. He can catch it. He can run it. He's explosive. Part of the reason I thought that is because we did your game at Kansas State a year ago when you went off. That for me was kind of your first showcase.

What what changed for you in that game that started giving you confidence that you can come and dominate each week? Well, you know, from last year as the season started going on, you know, I was getting, you know, some touches, you know, some experience, just trying to learn a lot. So when I had a chance to get in the games, a lot more to start, everything started to slow down for me. And then, you know, towards the end of the season, when I started to play against, you know, Kansas State, you know, completely. slow down for me and I started to understand the game. And, you know, just using my gift that, you know, God giving me, it showed on that field. And I feel ever since then, you know, it's been, it's been going up, you know, for every game since I've been in. I had some of the coaches at Colorado before your bowl game. They called me and they were like, hey, you did their games. What do you got,

what do you think we should do against Bejohn? And I was like, call time out. You've destroyed my buffs, man, last year in the bowl game. I know also in the opposite. He's listed, you know, there's been some great players at the University of Texas. Ricky won a Heisman trophy. And I know you've had a chance now to meet Ricky Williams and, and former relationship. Can you take me into that, you know, what have you learned from him? Yeah, so me and Ricky, we met in the summer, actually in Arizona for some event that they were going on, you know, out there at Scottsdale. And they invited me and him to sit at the table together.

And, you know, that whole time for about six hours, we were just chopping. it up about just everything about his experiences in college, about my experiences that are that are still going on and what I should look out for and the connections I should make while I'm here. So he's ever since then, he's, he's been in my ear. You know, he's, we've been texting a lot. You know, he's always giving me good advice about, you know, maybe about football, maybe how to hit that hole, maybe how to hit a different hole or just even life. So he's been, he's been a huge big brother for me. You know, I just appreciate him so much of, you know, guiding my steps, you know, because he took those steps and his steps were amazing and I'm trying

to, you know, follow his. Well, listen, your steps are becoming amazing before our eyes. Great job last week. Good luck moving forward. We'll be down there. Gus and I and Jenny are going to be down there in Austin. We can't wait to come down there. Huge matchup against Oklahoma State. So we'll have you, man, on Fox this week. Great talking with you. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right. Welcome back. Time for a little clat back. Let's go to the social media. sphere and check out what's going on. All three and seven four, I don't even understand your name. I hate generic names, but whatever.

I just need some kind of explanation with Bama over Buckeyes, and I'm not being a Buckeye Homer. Just make some kind of sense with your thought process on this. Well, I'm going to try to do that. Listen, I'm going to try to do that in the most respectful way I possibly can, even though you won't put your actual name in your Twitter handle, which I think is lame. But I digress.

I saw Ohio State Live, and they got absolutely run, absolutely run by Oregon because their defense was so bad. They were so bad they had to throw out their entire schematics on defense and totally change them. They had to get a new play caller on the defensive side. So they had to totally evolve in this season. They were young. Stroud was injured. I just didn't love what I'm seeing. Now they're very good offensively, but at least Alabama, they lost on the road, not at home, against the team that I think might even be more talented than what we think, even though they lost those previous games. is still a very talented team.

So the loss on the road versus at home is one reason. And Alabama is not going to have to throw out their schematics on one side of the football in order to get better. They can execute a little better inside the five-yard line, like I just showed you, a couple of segments ago. But overall, I think they're going to be just fine. That's why I have Ohio State behind Alabama in my rankings.

All right, hey, coming up Saturday, it's Big Noon Saturday. Gus, Jenny, I are going to be live in Austin as Texas takes on Oklahoma State. Folks, thank you for watching. This show is brought to you by Dr. Pepper, it is the one fans deserve.