Tide hoping linebackers coalesce after season in flux

— Alabama’s Rashaan Evans doesn’t even try to downplay how disruptive injuries have been to the Crimson Tide linebacker corps.

“The injuries, they mess up a lot of things. They mess up chemistry, they mess up schemes,” Evans conceded on Friday, as Alabama prepared for its College Football Playoff semifinal against Clemson in Monday night’s Sugar Bowl. “We’ve lost some guys, gained some guys, we lost another guy . ... We just have to do what we can do with what we’ve got.”

Fortunately for Alabama, college football is unlike any sport in terms of the monthlong hiatus between the end of the regular season and the major bowl games. It’s hard to know how Alabama’s defense will coalesce around players at several positions who’ve had limited snaps this season. But at least they’ve had time to get healthy, study their opponents and work on technique under the tutelage of defensive-minded coach Nick Saban, defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt and their positions coaches.

“Coach Pruitt and Coach Saban have done a great job keeping us level-headed and not making us overreact about something like this, which a lot of teams would,” said Evans, who missed several games at his linebacker position with a groin injury. “We’ve done a great job of doing what we can do with people we have. And the guys that are here now, they’re going to play a good game. I promise you that. They’re going to be well prepared. They’re minds are going to be clear.”

Linebackers Dylan Moses, Hootie Jones and Shaun Dion Hamilton are unavailable to play in the Sugar Bowl. The Moses’ injury perhaps speaks most to Alabama’s ill fortune at the linebacker spot; it happened during a practice after he’d made it to the end of the regular season healthy.

Jones, meanwhile, was injured during Alabama’s Iron Bowl loss to Auburn. Hamilton started the first nine games of the year before injuring his knee against LSU in early November.