The question whose answer holds the key to the 2017 season and could go a very very long way to resolve a lot of fanbase disquiet.

What happened at halftime of Wake Forest?

Adams was slowed. Wimbush appeared to lose all confidence including showing indecisiveness running the ball. Our defense tackled poorly down the stretch at times. They did not swarm to the ball as well like earlier in the year. Why I’m not sure.

Wake was the first team that really spread us out and had some athletes that could make plays. It seemed to shake our defensive confidence for whatever reason.

Offensively I do not think Kelly began calling plays but what I do think happened was a combination of a couple of mindsets. Led by Kelly and probably with collective agreement even if reluctantly by others, the staff felt to win at Miami and at Stanford as well as possible playoff games, they had to improve the passing game. Whether that opinion by the staff was true or not we will never know but it’s clear to me they came into that Wake game looking to get some passing reps in during a game situation. Clearly the plan went sideways.

On Monday night, Saban knew he was going to have to throw to win that game probably very early in it if not before it even started. I think this was Kelly and the staff’s mindset right or wrong for the home stretch and possible playoff. I do not necessarily disagree with that ideology but I believe they went about it the wrong way. There is no doubt even with our OL there would come a point where we would have to make plays in the passing game to win a big game. The problem is they tried to do that by making our QB run pass plays he isn’t able to execute. There are other ways we could have made plays through the air besides putting him in the gun and trying to make him Aaron Rodgers. That’s the issue IMHO.

we're in a lot of trouble when we actually play, you know, teams with decent talent.

Big issue to me was that we were too easy to scout and trap. There might have been some conditioning issues, but basically football is a copycat sport and teams will study film and tendencies all day long and as soon as something doesn't work (or vice versa) they'll attack it.

I don't know if it was the talent of Wake or the scheme we werent prepared for but they exploited us by spreading the field in both the run and pass game.

As ive stated before, we need to keep upgrading talent on defense. We get a guy here and there that is elite but we never seem to have a handful of them at once and we certainly never have it at all 3 levels of the defense at once.

can’t make anymore.

I think Kelly looked passive and almost disengaged the first half of the season, but when it was obvious the team had begun playing at a high level he took over. Maybe or maybe not individual play calling, but certainly the fundamental identity of the offense and what the scheme was going to be.

There is no reason we shouldn’t have beaten Stanford comfortably, but we were a different team by then, or I should say we had become the end of season kind of team that is the norm under Kelly.

...It seemed like the playcalling had turned to getting passing reps for Wimbush, and people around us were commenting to similar effect.