College Football Analysis: BCS National Championship Preview

Notable alumni: Bear Bryant, Julio Jones, Mark Ingram, Joe Namath, Ozzie Newsome, Bart Starr, Derrick Thomas

As expected, the heart and soul of this Alabama team has been it's defense and Trent Richardson. The defense leads in the Nation in Scoring Defense (8.8 ppg), Rushing Defense (74.92 ypg), Passing Defense (116.3 ypg) and Total Defense (191.3 ypg). Alabama is the only team in the Nation that has held it's opponents under 1000 yards rushing for the entire year (they are at 899 coming into this game). As far as Trent Richardson goes, he was just about everything Bama needed him to be and finished up third in the Heisman voting behind RG3 and Andrew Luck.

When Bama has the ball they want to establish the run and will run around 60% of the time. Richardson has been a workhorse as he's accounted for 56% of Bama's rushes, 60% of their rushing yards and was also tied for second most receptions on the team. When Bama played LSU, Richardson was held to his second lowest ypc of the year but did add 80 yards in receiving. It's clear that somebody besides Richardson needs to step up in this game to take some of the burden off of him and to free him up a little bit.

As the #1 receiver, Marquis Maze had a nice year (56 rec, 627 yds) but actually had two less TDs then he had last year as the #2 receiver option behind Julio Jones. Brad Smelley is a nice option to have a TE (27 rec, 4 TD) but Bama really needs for Darius Hanks, Kenny Bell or one of the other receivers to make some plays against the Tigers defense. When Bama played LSU, Maze had six receptions and the only other receiver to make a catch was Hanks (he only had two).

It will be very interesting to see how close to the vest Alabama plays this game. The last game was a game of field position with Bama missing four FGs (all four were from 40+ yards with two of them being 50+ yard attempts). Does Bama open up the offense more and try to get some shots like Georgia had in the first half of their game (where Georgia dropped two TD passes) or do they play another conservative game and hope to be more effective moving the football inside the red zone. It will be an interesting chess match.