Tide showing signs of building back into a good team

Watching Alabama whip Western Carolina and Vanderbilt offers little evidence for what kind of record Nick Saban will have in his first season as the Crimson Tide's head coach.

After two games and two wins, about all we know at this point is that Alabama will finish no worse than 2-and-whatever.

If you want to argue that the Crimson Tide won't even match last season's 6-7 record, you may be right.

But if you wish to say that Alabama is headed toward a very good year ... well, I won't much disagree with that one, either.

In fact, it's worth exploring the idea that the Crimson Tide might have a better team than most expect.

It's nothing more than a hunch, really, but Saban's first Alabama team simply looks like a much better one than the Crimson Tide has put forth in recent years.

In its first two games, Alabama played hard and put away soundly a couple of opponents that it should put away soundly.

Former coach Mike Shula's teams struggled to do that consistently. Heck, Alabama's win last year over a positively awful Duke team looked fuzzy until the fourth quarter, and when the Tide faced an almost-as-bad Mississippi State squad, Alabama not only lost but didn't look like the Bulldogs' equal. It sure didn't look like MSU just got lucky, and that was the most embarrassing part for the Tide.

If you want to point toward the primary reasons Shula got fired, look past the 0-4 record against Auburn and focus instead on abysmal performances in games like those two.

Former Alabama coach Gene Stallings, who won 70 games during 1990-96, used to say that if you think games like that are unimportant, just try losing one and you'll find out exactly how unimportant they aren't.

Because of this, Saturday's game against Vanderbilt looked like a big test. Few thought Alabama actually would lose the game — after all, this is Vanderbilt. I mean, come on, this is Vanderbilt.

But for the past decade or so, this is the exact kind of trap Alabama fell into more often than not.

Instead, in a weird reversal this weekend, Alabama put away its inferior opponent with little drama, and Auburn didn't. Since Tommy Tuberville took over at Auburn, his teams usually have won at home over teams such as South Florida.

Instead, Alabama won, and Auburn was the one suffering a puzzling loss.

Alabama did it the Saban way — actually, Alabama did it the way just about every successful coach there has done it.

The Crimson Tide ran the ball and stopped the run, winning the ground game with 221 yards to Vanderbilt's 57.

Alabama made only one turnover, and the Tide defense didn't allow Vanderbilt to turn it into points.

Alabama had no major drawbacks on special teams, which is something that always seemed to kill Mike DuBose's squads when he coached the Tide during 1997-2000.

In fact, that brilliant 69-yard punt return by specialist Javier Arenas set up the first touchdown.

The Crimson Tide offense still needs to improve inside the 20-yard line. In the first half, Alabama had first down at the Vanderbilt 8, the Vanderbilt 16 and the Vanderbilt 11, and had to settle for a field goal in all three instances.

But even though the results don't show it, Alabama looked more competent in those situations than it did under Shula.

(I still wonder what the Crimson Tide's attack would've looked like had Shula handed the play calling off completely to offensive coordinator Dave Rader, who was a finalist this spring for the Austin Peay head coaching job but didn't get it.)

For Saban to build his program, he needs to beat the teams that he should beat. And through two games, Alabama has done that.