Instant Analysis: Alabama 21, Vanderbilt 6

For BamaCentral.com, I'm Katie Windham here with Hunter DeCyber. After Alabama's 21-6 win over Vanderbilt, definitely not pretty, but Alabama did what it needed to do to win, and they weren't able to do that two years ago. They've had some letdown games in the Kalen DeBoer era and were not let down today. Hunter, just kind of what's your biggest takeaway from the Puppet Tide's win today? Yeah, I mean, it's got to be the defense. I mean, most games this year, Alabama's defense kind of fouled out the offenses a little bit. And that was the case for most of the first half. Like all the first quarter and most second quarter, it was all defense. Vanderbilt had many scoring opportunities. Now they drove them backwards for only field goals, really. And I mean, the same thing kind of went in the second half. Like some other games, Alabama's offense kind of fangs the defense and really kind of performs much better in the second, and we saw that today. Yeah, Alabama had three straight scoring drives in the middle of the game, the last drive of the first half and the first two of the second half. One of those, the last touchdown was set up by a big kickoff return by Dijon Lee, so you had some good aspects from offense, defense, and special teams. Offense, not great today. How much of that was with Keelan Russell not being at 100%? It made – Kalen DeBoer made it sound like he probably didn't practice a ton throughout the week, didn't get as many reps as he normally did. But then I think we also saw his greediness. He had three touchdowns, not his best game, made some mistakes. But he also was facing a lot of pressure. There was defenders in his face a lot throughout the game. And he did what he needed to do for Alabama to win the game. And that's just kind of the overall theme of this game. Not the best performance, but Alabama gets to win on the road in SEC. Obviously, this is not a typical SEC road environment. Thank you. They did what they needed to do, and there's two games left starting next week at Bryant-Denny Stadium against Chattanooga and then Auburn, and Bama Central will be there to cover it all. But that wraps it up for us here tonight at First Bank Stadium in Nashville. Thank you so much for watching.