Alabama preparing for another raucous environment in looming LSU game

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Up until about mid-October, Alabama’s road schedule hadn’t provided many difficulties from a crowd perspective. The Crimson Tide went on the road to play Wisconsin in September, a stadium that was half-empty by the fourth quarter, and in the loss to Vanderbilt, the crowd was a majority crimson and white.

But on Oct. 19, Alabama traveled to Neyland Stadium to face a rowdy crowd of over 100 thousand, and it didn’t go well. The Crimson Tide left Knoxville that night with its second loss of the season, and experienced difficulties communicating all throughout the game.

Alabama’s center, Parker Brailsford, said it was unlike any environment he’d ever played in.

“That was the loudest game I’ve ever been a part of,” Brailsford said. “If I’m being honest, I really couldn’t hear anything at all. [Jalen Milroe] was two steps away from me and I couldn’t hear what he was saying half the time. If you’re standing right next to a speaker [in practice] you can kind of replicate it, but you can’t really practice that.”

Alabama was called for a season-high in penalties against the Vols, many of which came from pre-snap communication issues. Now, the Crimson Tide is getting ready to go back on the road again, this time to Tiger Stadium, another 100,000-plus-seat venue home of the LSU Tigers.

“They told me it’s gonna be crazy, just like Tennessee was,” Brailsford said. “They pretty much told me it was gonna be crazy and wild.”

But now, Brailsford has a game in an environment like that under his belt. That experience will help him, and the offense as a whole, as they prepare for the upcoming clash next weekend.

Brailsford and Milroe have been working on ways to have better communication in the game, though he couldn’t go into specifics.

“I learned – I’m not sure I can talk about it – but little things with the scheme, little things with the cadence that I need to key in on. We’ve been working on it in practice a lot,” Brailsford said.

For the veteran Alabama players that have been to Death Valley before, they’ve made sure their younger teammates know what they’re about to walk into. Some have even made the claim it’ll be the toughest environment they play in all season, including Tennessee.

“Oh yeah, for sure, we’ve let all the guys know,” 5th-year linebacker Que Robinson said. “We talked about it yesterday, we were saying how it’s gonna be loud. There’s gonna be a whole bunch of people in there that just hate you. It might be worse than Tennessee’s stadium. I told them to get ready for anything.”

The game has enormous stakes, not just being a rivalry game, but both teams’ College Football Playoff hopes are hanging in the balance. Death Valley at night is one of the greatest spectacles in all of college football, and one this Alabama team will need to escape on Nov. 9 to keep marching towards its greater goals.

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