Mettenberger was on the sideline...

I don't know. I honestly can't believe I'm participating in this thread. But here's my take.

Lee had a nice season going, he did. But it's not like he was lighting the world on fire. He was hardly asked to do much in any of our games until Bama. Yes, we played good teams, but our defense, special teams, and running games, in that order, carried the team. Not Lee and our prolific passing game. Do any of you think BHarris was lighting it up last year prior to the Bama game? Nope. But he was 11 TDs and 0 INTs up until that game. That doesn't mean he was doing great, just like Lee wasn't doing great prior to Bama in 2011 either.

Get to the Bama game, and the guy CLEARLY doesn't have what it takes to win that night. He was AWFUL in that game, and bullshite it was any receiver's fault. As mentioned earlier, on the bad snap, there were guys running wide arse open and he threw it right to the safety. He was a deer in headlights, just like in 2008. Enter JJ and we start moving the ball on the ground against Bama, which nobody did. And we had beaten Bama the year before with JJ (although, yes...I remember Lee came in with JJ injured and threw a nice first down to Rueben Randle to basically ice the game). As the coach, it's a tough call. Here's a guy that CLEARLY doesn't have what it takes to beat Bama with that ridiculous defense they have, and here's another guy that gives the team another dimension, is tough, and has in fact beaten them before, so likely more confident.

That's why I think Lee never saw the field again after Bama except mop up time...because the decision was made to ride with JJ going forward after the Bama game to get him prepared better, as he had missed half the season.
The unfortunate thing is, we wind up somehow matched against Bama again, and they have a well over a month to rest up, and in fact to prepare for JJ.

And they whipped our asses with 5 FGs and a late garbage TD.

It's over though. We need to beat them so badly just to get that taste out of our mouths. It really sucks the life out of this board, and in fact, the entire fan base, to continually re-hash that game.