Alabama's Slow Starts Rooted In Execution Errors

The Alabama offense has scored in a multitude of ways this season but a small trend has shown itself.

The No. 8 Alabama Crimson Tide is heading to Lexington to take on the Kentucky Wildcats with a chance to clinch the SEC West division championship. The Tide, is 8-1 through the season's first 10 weeks with its only loss coming to No. 7 Texas in the second week. 

While Alabama has bounced back from its early loss and theoretically controls its own destiny with the rest of the year a disturbing trend has become a source of future concern. 

Alabama has punted on its opening possession in six of its last seven games, including each of the last five games in a row, starting slow against strong offensive teams and creating holes for the Tide to dig out of.

In fact it hasn't just been the opening drive. Alabama has punted or turned the ball over in 63% of its first three drives of each game of the year. 

So what's gone wrong for Alabama to contribute to the slow starts?

"Like, the same thing that goes wrong on anything that doesn't work. Don't execute very well. Sometimes maybe they do a little bit something different on defense or maybe what you thought they were going to play they didn't play and as you get into the flow of the game and see what they're playing guys execute a little better. It all comes down to execution, whether it's offense, defense or special teams," said Saban on Wednesday.

"Just Like we gave up a touchdown on the first drive last week last week because we busted a coverage. It wasn't because it was the first drive, it was because we busted a coverage. I mean, they'd have scored in the fourth quarter, one-minute to go if we had played like that. It all comes down to how do you execute what you do and all 11 guys have got to do their job. That's the key to having success. It's great to start fast and it's great to finish strong and so to do both those things is something we've been trying to focus on all year long. So we probably did a little better job of that than we have all year."

In fairness, the Alabama offense scored a touchdown on the second and their drive against the LSU defense, whilst the Crimson Tide defense forced a stop on downs and a missed field goal in its second and third opportunity on the field thus leaving Alabama ahead 14-7 after the opening three-possession exchange.

Former Alabama Basketball Player Bryan Passink on The Joe Gaither Show