Alabama is the unanimous No. 1 college football team in the country, owning an 8-0 overall record and having won its five Southeastern Conference games by a combined 200 points.
Yet Crimson Tide players believe they're just beginning to scratch the surface of what they can be. That was certainly the assessment of junior running back Bo Scarbrough when he was asked to rate Alabama on a 1-to-10 scale following Saturday's 45-7 trampling of Tennessee inside Bryant-Denny Stadium.
"To be honest, I think we're probably around a 5 or a 6," Scarbrough said. "With the athletes that we have here at Alabama and the kind of team, coaches and training staff that we have, I think we can be way better than where we are right now. It always comes down to what we do.
"We can improve in every part of our game. There's never a time when we say, 'We've got that.' There is always an opportunity to work on something."
Improving is the objective this week as Alabama enters its lone open date of its 12-game regular season. The Crimson Tide will be back in action Nov. 4, when they host LSU.
Judging by wins the past two weeks over Arkansas and Tennessee by a combined 86-16, it would appear Alabama doesn't need any time off, but the open date is being welcomed warmly.
"Obviously it helps to get some of our guys who play a lot of plays a little extra time to recover," Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban said. "We certainly have lots of things we can improve on, and we'll look at all the opponents we have, especially our SEC opponents, and see if there are things we need to work on."
Said senior linebacker Rashaan Evans: "I'm happy, because it gives us a chance to get better and focus on what we need to improve on. I feel like that's the No. 1 thing we're going to do with this bye week."
Alabama's three remaining SEC games are against LSU, Mississippi State and Auburn, a trio that possesses a combined overall record of 17-6 and a combined league mark of 9-4. The Crimson Tide's five conference victims to this point - Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Arkansas and Tennessee - are a combined 16-19 overall and 4-16 in SEC games.
Arkansas, Tennessee and Vanderbilt are a combined 0-12 in league play.
"I think the toughest games and the best teams that we have to play are ahead of us," Saban said, "and we're certainly going to need to play better and with more consistency. We need to improve our balance on offense by throwing the ball more effectively on a consistent basis, and defensively we're going to be challenged a lot more than we have been these last couple of games.
"We've played against two relatively inexperienced quarterbacks (Arkansas' Cole Kelley and Tennessee's Jarrett Guarantano) who've struggled a little bit. I'm sure they'll both be really good quarterbacks some day, but this is not an easy place for a guy to come in and start his second game."
Dominant on 'D'
Alabama is No. 1 nationally in total defense (allowing 236.0 yards per game) and rushing defense (66.4), and the Crimson Tide are No. 2 in scoring defense (9.8) behind Penn State (9.6).
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.