Booker Discusses Line Struggles

In the sports talk arena, we get a lot of calls from Alabama fans wanting to know why the Tide offensive line struggles so much. Pre-snap penalties are trouble. Holding calls are drive-killers. Sacks allowed, even worse.

All-SEC guard candidate Tyler Booker was queried on just that topic this week heading into Saturday's Tennessee game.

“There’s a lot of guys on offensive line that are still getting some of their first starts, some of their first major reps,” Booker answered. “And they just have to figure out how to really embrace the moment, take a deep breath and be like, ‘OK I’m here, time to perform.’ But all those guys have improved a lot and they just have to continue to improve, we all do.”

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Kadyn Proctor, Jaeden Roberts and Elijah Pritchett are a few of those guys. Proctor and Pritchett are platooning at left tackle. Both have struggled.

As the left guard, Booker has a birds eye view of that.

“The thing that’s very encouraging about those guys, they know what they did wrong,” Booker said. “Now it’s just time to prevent it from happening and just being more technically sound.

“The thing that get them in trouble is not focusing on their technique. They have all the talent in the world, it’s just consistency and focusing on technique, so that’s what I’m going to be reiterating to them all week long.”

He'll specifically remind his younger teammates about mental errors and footwork. Those will be important against a quick Tennessee front seven.

“We work a lot of footwork drills,” Booker said, “especially in the summer. We still work on it every day, but at this point you either have it or you don’t. But you continue to try to make little adjustments every week to get better.”

Booker added that linemen try to learn from their mistakes. “I feel like it changed because we realized that we’re beatable,” he said. “We realized that we’re human. That Texas loss really woke us up. So we have a lot better approach to learning from our mistakes.”