Comparing Alabama’s Offense to Past Championship Teams

With the addition of offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin, the Alabama offense has definitely looked different than teams from the past. This is certainly not your father's Alabama team, but does that mean this team isn't able to win a championship? Let's see what the offensive numbers say.

We'll just go ahead and glance over the Tide's stats this season and see how they compare to the 2009, 2011, and 2012 championship teams.

In 2014, Alabama has averaged 36.9 points per game, good enough to be 26th in the country. They pick up 6.93 yards per play, and roll out 514.57 yards per game, putting the Tide at 8th and 16th in major college football, respectively.

In comparison, in Alabama's three national championships under Nick Saban, they haven't ranked higher than 31st in yards per game. In fact, Alabama is on pace with the 2012 national championship team, who averaged 6.95 yards per play and ranked 5th in the country in that category.

To say that Lane Kiffin isn't doing his job correctly wouldn't exactly be accurate by any stretch of the imagination.

The 2009 team was one of the most innovative offenses in Alabama football history, with Mark Ingram winning the program's first Heisman Trophy, Julio Jones out wide at the receiver position, and a young stud running back named Trent Richardson backing up the Heisman Trophy winner. While these players were putting up their gaudy numbers, they didn't know that they were reinventing the wheel, at least doing so by Alabama Crimson Tide standards.

The Tide averaged 403 yards per game that season, and went on to have one of the greatest seasons in college football history. On top of that, they ran 947 plays over the course of the season and averaged just under six yards per play. Of course, the Tide's calling card that year was their dominant defense, but it seemed that that was the season where the tide was beginning to turn (pun intended).

The 2011 season was the first year that Tide great A.J. McCarron took his first snap from center as a starting quarterback, and the offense continued to evolve. Alabama's offense was better than two years previous, averaging 429 yards per game, and scored 34.8 points per game, up 2.7 points from 2009. It's clear that from 2009-2011, Nick Saban was looking for more offensive production, and appears he got what he asked for.

As stated previously, Alabama was on an offensive tear through the 2012 season, putting up 6.95 yards per play, only behind Georgia, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, and Florida State. Not only was this team more explosive than the 2011 squad, but it was more explosive over a longer period of time, as evidenced by their 445 yards per game and scored more points as well, putting up 38.7 points per game, which ranked second in the SEC behind just Texas A&M.

So what does this have to do with this year's team? As I'm sure you can tell, each championship team in Tuscaloosa has increased offensive production every year, and this year it has increased by quite a bit more than years past. When comparing only the championship years, Alabama's offensive output increased by 6.6% between the '09 team and the '11 team. From '11 to '12, the offense only yielded an increase of 3.7%. However, between the '12 championship team and this year's potential championship team, the offensive production has increased by 15.51%.

That's pretty significant.

For the ones who are used to watching Alabama ground and pound and run the clock out to win games in the teens or twenties, that day and age is over. The best athletes are on the offensive side of the ball now, and giving up 20 points per game isn't a bad statistic anymore.

Which makes the Tide's victory over Texas A&M this past weekend that much more impressive.