- No fireworks today, if you can believe it. Saban hasn't really delivered a rant this year and this week would have been a prime opportunity, but it hasn't happened. Closest thing yet would have been on Saturday when he informed us brusquely that he did indeed vote. Maybe CNS is bottling up his emotions? I've been told that isn't healthy.
- Didn't tip his hand as to who would play at RG this week, but had more good things to say about Korren Kirven. Sounds like Lester Cotton will continue to work at both guard and tackle.
- Talked about some of the coaches they talked to when implementing the new offense. But the most interesting thing was talking about how it was done. He said it took a ton of research, because just learning new plays isn't going to work. "You have to have all the answers," he said. That means learning how defenses respond, how to pick up blitzes, all those things with the new offense.
- I asked him about what his normal postgame routine is. That's the first question below if you want to see it. It more or less involves lots of shaking hands and lots of media obligations.
- No injury update given.
OPENING STATEMENT
"As I said earlier in the week, the focus needs to be on building the momentum we have on the things we've done well and trying to improve on the things that we haven't done so well. I think everybody has to trust and believe in, to get an optimum level of performance, you have to have high achievement motivation and low anxiety and be able to focus on the things that you need to do that are going to help you today.
"Not worry about what's going to happen in the future but what's going to help you today and have a better chance to be successful as a player, what's going to help your unit have a better chance to be successful and what’s going to help your team have a better chance to be successful. Talked about playing to a standard, you have to prepare to a standard, you have to execute to a standard. That's what we're interested in trying to do this week.
Do you have any kind of a tradition or a routine that you do after a home game?
"Well, I go shake hands with every player on the team and every coach, then I go to a press conference and visit with my favorite family of people that I look forward to meeting every week. Then I do a radio show and then I do a TV show. Then I go in the recruiting room and shake hands with all the recruits. By the time I get home, all the company has pretty much settled in and I'm lucky if I can get something to eat.
"I don't know what would happen if we lost. I mean, Hell's Bells."
How important to you is it to have Jalen Hurts become comfortable operating under center? How do you think his development has been on that?
"I think it's important to him. I think it's important to the offense. I think it's important to our team. When you say it's important to me, I think I'm just a part of the team here. Jalen has progressed very nicely and I thought he played his best and most complete game in the last game against Mississippi State. Hopefully we can build on that."
We saw Lester working at right tackle today. What can he bring to that position and who do you like at RG this week?
"Well, you know, Lester was a tackle for a long time. We tried to make him a guard. The development has been maybe not as quickly as we'd like. So in order to try and get the best five players on the field, we moved some other players and did some experimenting. Kirven has done a really good job and so did the other guys that played the position. We thought maybe we'd look and see if Lester could develop a little bit better at tackle but he's still playing right guard. He probably is going to get reps at both of those positions."
Punt returns seem to be important for you. It seems punt return men may take more chances now than they used to, catching the ball with people close. You also see some people taking it deep inside the ten…
"I can't comment on everybody else's punt returners. I certainly want our guys to use good judgment and understand that the most important thing is the possession of the ball and they should not try to catch the ball in traffic and take chances with the ball. But it's a judgment. A guy is looking at a ball that's hanging in the air for four, four-and-a-half seconds. There's guys running down the field and he's got to make a judgment as to when the ball is going to get here, when they're going to get here.
"I think that it may seem that way because of so much of what I call rugby punt, the spread punt formation which looks like kickoff coverage, which probably makes it a little more difficult to hold people up. A lot of the punter don't punt hangtime-type punts. They punt line drive punts that hit the ground and roll. In a lot of cases we're out there teaching a guy not only to field the ball when it's in the air but also how to play the ball on the ground. I think it's a combination of the punt changed and I think the punters have changed a bit. So I think the whole philosophy of that part of the game is a little bit different than it used to be.
"We still have our guys play the ten. If you catch the ball at the nine, it happens. You're on the ten and you back up a step because you misjudge the ball a little bit and you're already committed to catching it. But if one of our guys catches the ball way deep down in there, that's not really what we want him to do."
Thoughts on JK Scott not being one of the semifinalists for the Ray Guy Award?
"I'm not here to criticize anybody or anything like that. Everybody has to make their choices based on whatever their criteria is. In my opinion, JK is maybe the best punter in the country in terms of what he does for our team. His average, his consistency this year, his hangtime… Our coverage unit has been better in that regard and I think we're in the top one, two or three in punt, net punt and all that in our conference, which speaks highly for the job that he's done. He's got good operation time. So you know, that's my opinion. It's not a criticism of anybody else or saying what anybody else should have done. I have respect for all these people who make these decisions. But in my opinion I think he's one of the best punters in the country and certainly one of the most valuable guys on our team."
Which program did you study the closest when you revamped the offense?
"I think that we visited a lot of different places. We had people come here. We had Tom Herman come here from Ohio State after we played them in the playoff. We visited TCU. We watch a lot of film and we obviously see a lot of things like, in some cases, that we do now, that are difficult to defend, that we discuss as a staff. Sometimes we implement it, sometimes we don't.
"I think the thing that we have to be really cautious of that I think we've done a pretty good job of is, you just can't put new plays in without doing a tremendous amount of research. Because you have to have all the answers. They're not going to stay in one defense. They're not going to stand there. They're going to angle, slant, blitz. You have to have all the answers. I think that is something that we've done a really good job with our offensive coaching staff."
You said for Jalen's progress, you limited how much of the field he could read. Where is he in that progress? How much of the playbook or the field is he allowed to take advantage of?
"First of all, that's not really what I said. I said the guy has to know whether it's the middle of the field or split the safeties and which half of the field that he works on versus what he reads in the coverage. That's how most passing games are built. It's not what we allow him to do or don't allow him to do. We're trying to get him to do that very effectively. He is getting better and better and better at it. I think it was a good indication, the way he played in the last game, the progress that he's made. We have to trust in the quarterback, that we can get the ball to our skill guys and he's going to get it to them effectively in the right places and the right time so that we can make explosive plays down the field. So I think we're making progress in that area but we're continuing to work on it every day."
