It’s no secret right now that Alabama football is trending down after last week’s horrifying performance in Tallahassee.
If the stock market applied to football teams, the Crimson Tide would be seen as crashing and burning at the moment, with most buyers immediately wanting to sell their shares.
So, how are some of the individual football players on the team doing, whether good enough to want to buy or bad to the point you want to sell? Here is the first rendition of “Buy or Sell,” taking a look at where some of Alabama’s players are trending.
BUY: Germie Bernard, wide receiver
The star of the first game of the season for Alabama was no doubt the senior wide receiver, putting on a strong performance from start to finish. Bernard had a career day, hauling in eight catches for 146 yards.
He picked up exactly where he left off last season, as he had at least 60 receiving yards in seven of the last eight games. It’s not crazy to say at this point that Bernard might be the best wide receiver on the team as he continues to put up numbers and become a firm leader of the Crimson Tide.
“His desire and passion for the game, you just see how he plays, whether it’s a run block or a pass play,” offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb said. “We just set that as the gold standard, and if it’s not what Germ’s doing, it’s not good enough.”
BUY: Kevin Riley, running back
Just a month ago, it seemed like Riley was buried on the depth chart as he was well behind the likes of Jam Miller, Richard Young, Dre Washington and Daniel Hill in the running back room.
But the redshirt freshman got an opportunity this past Saturday with Miller out until SEC play, and he took advantage. He only had five carries for a team-high 31 yards and had the team’s longest run of the day at 12 yards.
“Kev showed up. I thought he showed a good burst,” Grubb said. “That’s something we’re excited to see, in what game reps were gonna show up from what running back.”
Riley showcased a solid mix of speed and ability to break tackles, and his 6.1 yards per carry were by far the best out of the running back group, with Young’s 2.9 being the next closest. Expect Riley to have a bigger workload going forward.
SELL: Kadyn Proctor, left tackle
When you are a preseason All-American and projected to go in the first round on many draft boards, high expectations are going to come. Those expectations don’t involve allowing six pressures in the first game of the season.
But unfortunately for Proctor, that was the case, as PFF charted him as allowing the most pressures out of any player in Week 1 with those six. He seemed helpless at times, unable to consistently contain the Florida State defensive pressure and not looking agile enough to do anything about it.
Proctor’s brutal performance against the Seminoles may just have been a bad day and struggling in the Florida rain, but it’s worrisome to wonder if he is going to struggle all season and have quarterback Ty Simpson running for his life. For now, his stock is trending downwards.
SELL: Bray Hubbard, safety
Hubbard was seen as the surprise of last season by many after stepping up at the role of safety in Keon Sabb’s absence and excelling, good enough to the point where some might wonder if he’ll be an All-American this season.
But his performance took a complete 180 Saturday, as Hubbard had put together a brutal day of film from start to finish. He seemed to play with almost no physicality, getting bulldozed by blockers and not being in a strong position to make plays on the football.
The most embarrassing part isn’t his rough performance, which can happen on any given Saturday, but the fact that Hubbard at many times looked like he wasn’t trying, with a clip going viral of him not hustling — barely even jogging in fact — during a Florida State touchdown play.
This is someone who was a team captain for the game, looking like he had better things to do than play football. Hubbard can easily turn his performance and effort around and look similar to how he did last season, but he is trending heavily downward right now.
SELL: Kane Wommack against mobile quarterbacks
This is something that’s becoming a worrisome trend, as Saturday wasn’t the first time we saw a quarterback continuously making plays with his legs.
Alabama fans certainly will remember last season’s losses against Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, as quarterbacks Diego Pavia and Jackson Arnold did damage with their legs all game and put the Crimson Tide in massive holes they couldn’t quite climb out of. Seminoles quarterback Thomas Castellanos is just another player who tormented Wommack’s defense with his dual-threat ability.
There’s a lot of good with the defense that Wommack runs, as the Crimson Tide ranked top-10 last season in points allowed and turnovers per game, but a thorn is starting to be heavily exposed with his defense: scrambling quarterbacks.
With SEC games against Pavia, Arnold and speedy quarterbacks LaNorris Sellers and Gunner Stockton, Wommack will need to turn his woes against dual-threat quarterbacks around sooner rather than later.
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