It probably had some effect, but that alone cannot justify that beatdown we took in Miami. Our guys looked spooked from the get-go. I think it's lazy to attribute that entirely to a lack of physical practices. We should've put up a better fight, period. It's also the coaches' job to settle the team down and correct mistakes during the game.
The offense wasn't much better, but I was shocked at how bad our defense looked. It literally looked to me like Alabama could have scored on every single possession had it wanted to - sort of how we looked against Wake Forest. There is simply no excuse for that, especially with the guys we had on defense.
BTW, hindsight is always 20/20. Had ND somehow won that game, people would've been praising Kelly for letting the team heal and "get its legs back".
