What Saban Said...At Monday's Press Briefing
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| Alabama head football coach Nick Saban Photo Credit: Alabama Athletics |
University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban once again met with the press yesterday as is his custom each Monday following a game. He spoke of his pride for the team and the way they competed, focus, injuries as well as the upcoming game with Kent State, Saban's alma mater, this Saturday.
In his opening statement, Saban said, "As I said after the game, I am very proud of the way our team
competed in the game. The guys really played hard; played with a lot of
heart; played with a lot of competitive spirit; but when you look at
things the devil is kind of in the details. We could have really lost
the game based on mental mistakes, metal errors, and lack of execution
at times, which led to really bad plays for our team. Our focus needs to
be on getting these things corrected and having the ability to focus on
each and every play. It's kind of hard to figure that out when you get
behind 24-3. We basically gave them 14 points – one was the missed
execution of a line call, which gave them a sack fumble for a touchdown,
and one, which was a busted coverage in the secondary and was really
pretty easy and a lack of disciple and eye control led to an uncontested
touchdown. Then to come back and sort of go 45-6 over the next however
many minutes in the game, and we followed that by doing a really poor
job finishing the game and allowing them to score 13 points in the last
five minutes. All these things catch up with you if you don't fix them,
correct them, focus on every play and get things executed properly; that
leads to a lot of problems. You don't ever want to beat yourself, and
when you do things like that you give yourself an opportunity to beat
yourself. It's one thing to get beat physically – you can't cover them,
you can't block them upfront – that's different and that may happen
someday. All this other stuff, you beat yourself and that is what we
have to get fixed.
"I'm sure you all got the players of the week. We aren't practicing
today. I think our team needs a little bit of a physical rest and
recovery time, so we will have our normal meetings, and we will do
stretch and stride, but we are not practicing today."ArDarius Stewart would be the biggest question mark for this game. I think Jalen (Hurts) is fine, Eddie Jackson is fine and Minkah (Fitzpatrick) is fine, but it may take a day or so to get those guys back in the lineup. The focus here for us is to sort of pay attention to detail, play in and play out, so that we get better consistency and execution.
"Kent State, my alma mater. I was telling Terry this morning, I watch these games and tapes and look out on the field and (think about how) I played there, and I can't remember too many games that I played in there, so I guess I'm getting old. They did a nice job against Penn State; it was 16-13 at the half, and they actually missed a field goal to tie the game. I think they have settled on a quarterback, No. 17, (Mylik) Mitchell, who is a very athletic guy and has played really well for them. You don't have to look far to see Central Michigan beating Oklahoma State. The Mid-American Conference is sort of known for being able to come up against really good teams and come up with some wins. Obviously, North Dakota State beating Iowa, which is a ranked team, this happens every week and it happens because the teams that they are playing don't have the proper respect. They don't prepare correctly. They don't play very well and the other team has players too that are very capable. They need to be respected, and we need to focus on what we need to do to get better as a team and play to out standard, and that certainly is going to be the message for this week."
In addition to his opening statement, Saban addressed questions, including why there were so many horizontal plays like jet sweeps and bubble screens in the first half as opposed to running directly into the line as they did in the second half. He said that it was planned that way in order to execute the game plan for the second half. (See accompanying article, "Hey, You Arm-Chair Coaches!" But, he did add that if the perimeter plays had better blocking they would have been more effective.
Oh, and Saban also said that he has not named Hurts as the full time starter at quarterback and has no plans to do so.
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University of Alabama Football
Jalen Hurts, Eddie Jackson SEC Players Of The Week
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| Graphic/Photo Credit: Alabama Graphics Department |
In only his second start as a college quarterback as well as it being his first Southeastern Conference game (and away at that), Jalen Hurts led the Alabama offense with 304 yards of total offense, throwing for 158 yards and rushing for 146 yards. He finished the game 19-of-31 with an interception while completing five passes for 17 yards or more, with 45 yards being his longest toss of the contest. Hurts also had eight rushes of 10 yards or more, including seven rushes that went for first downs.
He is the first Alabama quarterback to rush (146) and pass (158) for more than 100 yards since Tyler Watts back in 2001.
Eddie Jackson was added to the special teams in the punt return role for the first time, taking the very first punt return of his career 85 yards for a late second-quarter touchdown that helped bring the Crimson Tide within seven points of Ole Miss heading into halftime. Jackson finished his day returning two punts for 95 yards, averaging 47.5 yards per return. The senior defensive back added two tackles, with half of a tackle for loss.
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| Graphics/Photo Credit: Alabama Graphics Department |
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University of Alabama Football
Coaching Staff Names 9 As Players Of The Week
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| 2016 University of Alabama Coaching Staff Photo Credit: Alabama Athletics |
Bozeman didn't allow a sack, commit a penalty and had three knockdown blocks this past Saturday against the Ole Miss rebels, producing the Crimson Tide's highest grade along the offensive line. The young man is Bama's starting center, and graded out at 86 percent for his performance.
Harris had a 144-yard rushing day last Saturday on 16 carries. It was a career-high day for the youngster and the second time he has run the ball over 100 yards in a game this young season. He rushed for 29 yards in the first half on six carries, then exploded in the second with 10 carries for 115 yards.
True freshman quaterback Jalen Hurts led the Crimson Tide with 304 yards of total offense, which included 158 passing yards and 146 rushing yards. He was the Tide's leading rusher in the Alabama-Ole Miss contest. Hurts finished the day 19-of-31 with five of those passes going for 17 yards or more, including a long of 45. He also accounted for seven first downs through the air as well as seven rushing first downs. He is the first Alabama quarterback to rush (146) and pass (158) for more than 100 yards dating back to 2001, and his rushing total was the fifth-most yards by a quarterback in Alabama football history.
Turning to the defense, Anderson, Foster and Tomlinson accounted for 22 of the Bama's 76 total tackles. Foster finished the game with a team-leading and career-high 12 tackles. Tomlinson tied for second at seven stops while adding one pass breakup. Anderson forced a Rebel fumble with his strip-sack early in the third quarter that was returned for a touchdown to even the score at 24-24. The senior linebacker finished with three tackles, including his sack for a loss of -8 yards, and the forced fumble.
Griffith's leg came through big for the Tide. He finished the day with two field goals from 32 and 30 yards out, respectively, to go along with his perfect five extra points. Griffith kicked off nine times for 570 yards to average 63.3 yards per kick with seven of the kicks going for a touchback.
Holcombe came through Saturday with a third special teams tackle for the season. He made a big stop on one of the Rebels' two kickoff returns at their own 10-yard line.
Jackson enjoyed his first career punt return of the season, going 85 yards for a score with 1:05 remaining in the second quarter. In all he returned two punts for 95 total yards to average 47.5 yards per return while adding the touchdown, his second non-offensive touchdown in as many weeks. He also had one interception return against Western Kentucky the previous week.
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| Graphics/Photo Credit: Alabama Graphics Department |
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Alabama Volleyball
Krystal Rivers Named SEC Offensive Player Of The Week
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| Alabama's Krystal Rivers SEC Offensive Player of the Week Photo Credit: Alabama Athletics |
Rivers led the Crimson Tide this past weekend with an amazing 54 kills over nine sets of play, an average of 6.00 kills per set, while posting seven aces from the service line. Added to this SEC honor, Rivers was also named the Crimson-White Tournament MVP. Her 54 kills has moved her to second all-time at Alabama in career kills with 1,710, just 380 shy of Erin Heffner's (2001-04) career record of 2,090.
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Hey, You Arm-Chair Coaches!
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| Coach Nick Saban Photo Credit: Alabama Athletics |
Squalling, crying and complaining! Even running down the coaching staff! I swear a lot of the Alabama fans complained more about the play-calling in the Alabama-Ole Miss contest than they did celebrating after the game was over. Sportcasters, bloggers, writers, and even the head coach's wife and daughter wondered about the first-half (and Twitter Bama fans practicially the entire game) offensive plays being called from the sideline.
Amazing how many National Championships Alabama head coach Nick Saban and crew have won for the University of Alabama. Notice the way quarterbacks at Alabama, with no previous experience, all of a sudden blossom and put up big numbers and even break records thanks to Lane Kiffin?
Yet fans beret the coaches, especially Kiffin, and question Saban.
All kinds of complaints could be heard coming from most, not all, Alabama fans on Saturday because of the jet sweeps and screens and swing passes being called in the first half of this past Saturday's game. I especially enjoyed the Bama radio "experts" and writers screaming for Kiffin to stop, or for Saban to take over the play-calling, or some even suggesting they could do a better job.
I blocked numerous of these that continued bereting the coaches. I won't keep a non-Bama fan that hates on our team long, and I only give very little additional time to true Bama fans. One fan even said that no one can talk about her mama, but in certain situations she was fair game for her. Blocked.
I said very little. I did tweet a time or two there was a method to this madness. I pointed out this was how it had been done (some) in the past. I did mention it would or should pay off in the second half.
It did.
Nick Saban addressed the issue. In all there were 12 of the type plays in the first half many were screaming about. They only picked up 30 yards. Yep, doesn't look very good.
Then Saban said they decided on this particular strategy for this game to open up the running lanes in the second half. Remember, that's when Bama picked up 218 of its 334 yards rushing? (I believe I also mentioned to the Twitter group that "the light was beginning to come on" for some of them when a few finally mentioned near the end of the game that they "thought" they saw what had been happening with the play-calling.)
"I think that we were trying to run the ball on the perimeter to see if we could get them tired, which we did. Then we had a lot more direct runs later and played a lot more physical interior line play for us and had success running the ball inside. Sometimes one of these things build on the other. I think that was the plan in the game."
It sure worked. Regardless of what some still say about the play-calling.
The Crimson Tide was able to score 17 of its 27 offensive points after the halftime break, and according to Saban, a lot of it was due to the plan that was put into place on Saturday. When the Tide offense went after the perimeter in the first half, it opened up the middle ground for bigger gains up the middle as well as through the air.
Saban offered a bit of coaching for the masses yesterday, "They've got pretty good speed on defense and they trapped us down pretty good on the edges. We came back and ran the ball inside off of some of the same motions and the same formations. That's what you folks don't sometimes get the grasp of on the jet sweep. Now you're handing the ball and running a counter the other way and they're all running out there because you ran the play in the first half, [and]now you bust them on this play. But you all don't see that. You just see, 'We ran that play good so why don't we run it more?'
So, like Saban referred to Ms. Terry and Kristen, let's add some of the Bama faithful when he said that they think they've got all the answers.
Roll Tide!
