Alabama will hit the road for the first time this season as it heads to Tampa to take on South Florida on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. CT inside Raymond James Stadium. Wednesday, Nick Saban spoke to reporters in his final press conference before the matchup.
Here’s a transcript of what he said as well as my take on what it means.
Opening statement
“The focus that we have is trying to get everybody to play to their very best ability, everybody play to a standard, everybody buy into not just talking about what standard is but what do I actually have to do to be able to accomplish that, play that, prepare so that we can go take and play the games to that level and do it for 60 minutes in the game. And that’s something that we’ve been talking about all week.
Players have responded pretty well to it. I think the preparation has gone fairly well. So we’ve just gotta keep these guys focused on what they need to do. Obviously, the standard comes from here. Motivation comes from out there. And we would like for everybody to have pride in their performance so their standard is something that’s important to them and they’re willing to do the things to invest in their future that they need to do so that they can be the best players that they can be.
Nobody can really have the poor-me’s about my circumstance, my situation and how I feel. We lost a game. None of that. Don’t waste a failing. Do everything you can to try to improve and get better, and that’ll help our team get better, as well.”
Tony’s take: Saban wants his players to walk the walk, not talk the talk. It’s one thing to say you want to play to the Alabama standard. It’s another to put in the work to do so. Alabama used up its wake-up call with its loss to Texas. Now, players will have to rise to the occasion if they want to save their season.
On Jalen Milroe’s ability to react to blitzes
“The issue in the game was – I think we only got sacked once on the blitz, and the back cut the linebacker and he got up and still sacked the quarterback. The other issues were really basically four-man rush, three-man rush. So I think that he has done OK. I think that what we need to do as an offense is everybody’s gotta pay more attention to detail. We can’t give bird and rabbits so the other team knows when we’re passing so they can tee off, aight. All these little things sort of add up to create a disadvantage for you if you don’t get them fixed. These are all things that our players need to understand and need to do so we can protect better and the quarterback can have a better chance to operate.”
Tony’s take: Texas recorded five sacks and four quarterback hurries without bringing the house against Alabama. While Milroe was met with plenty of pressure in the pocket, he’s got to be better about getting rid of the ball quicker. According to Pro Football Focus, he leads all SEC starting quarterbacks, averaging 2.84 seconds to get the ball out on dropbacks that result in a pass. That being said, Saban is right that Alabama’s struggles with pressure against the Longhorns weren’t all on Milroe.
On the development of depth in the secondary
“They’ve been good this week. They’ve all been able to practice and do what they can do. Now, this team’s gonna go fast. They’re fastball, fastball, as fast as anybody in the country goes, so we probably can’t sub on third down. You’re gonna have to play with whoever’s in the game. So when we tried to do that in the past against teams like this, we get caught with 12 guys on the field or we can’t get them off the field when they make a first down. So we’ve been playing with those five guys. They’ve all not had any issues this week, so hopefully, that’ll be beneficial in terms of practice reps, togetherness, communication and all that type of thing.”
Tony’s take: There weren’t many injury concerns heading into this week. Still, it’s nice to hear Malachi Moore and Jaylen Key weren’t held back after battling through injuries last week. Earlier in the day, Saban compared South Florida’s offense to Tennessee’s. While the Bulls aren’t as talented as the Volunteers, Alabama will still want a full secondary as it looks to stop their spread attack.
On the recruiting benefit of playing in Tampa
“I think anytime you play on the road and you play a quality opponent, which I think these guys have made tremendous improvement in their team and the quality of the players and all that. I mean, it’s a game that’s gonna be on TV. It’s a good market for our fan base in Central Florida. I think it’s all good. But I think it’s only good if you play good. Image is something that you’ve gotta work to really have in terms of what I talked about before in terms of standard, how you play and the things that you do. So that pride in performance is gonna be important no matter where we play.”
Tony’s take: This might be a weird road trip for Alabama, but it does allow the Crimson Tide to travel to one of its biggest recruiting pipelines. Alabama has poached plenty of South Florida talents over the years, including Amari Cooper, Calvin Ridley, Jerry Jeudy, Patrick Surtain II and Dallas Turner among others. That being said, the trip is only an advantage if Alabama can put in an impressive performance.
On when to let a player develop or make a change at a position
“I think everything is performance-based. Like I said before, and I said this to the team – if you want security at your position, then you have to play well. That’s what gets you security at your position. If you’re not playing well, then we’re gonna evaluate can anybody else play that position more consistently, better, whatever.
“Because everybody’s trying, everybody’s trying to give their best. People are sometimes critical of whatever. But nobody takes a loss harder than the players. Nobody takes a loss hard than the coaches. Because it’s our blood, sweat and tears that we put into it, and we wanna do it better. And I think the players wanna do it better.
“But we live in a result-oriented world, and we have to live with consequences of what we do. I mean, nobody plans on having a wreck and hurting somebody, but yet, that could create consequences for your future that are unbelievable. So you don’t it on purpose, you try hard, you wanna be the best that you can be and I think that’s the attitude that everybody should keep, regardless of what your circumstances are. Because even if you have a failing, you need to go work on taking advantage of the next opportunity that you have.
“I don’t know I can truly answer your question as to when do you make those decisions. I think it’s truly gotta be based on someone’s performance and how it’s affecting everybody else on the team.”
Tony’s take: As much as Saban wants his players to succeed, there comes a time when a coach needs to make a change for the betterment of the team. It will be interesting to see if Saban follows up on these statements if Alabama continues to struggle in certain areas.
On lessons learned from the past about establishing offensive identity
“Yeah, I think that we went through some struggles – I forget what year, maybe 2013, 14, 15, somewhere along there – where we were struggling early in the season. We lost to Ole Miss early in the season. We were sort of struggling on offense, couldn’t find an identity. Eventually found an identity and had a really good season. So you keep searching. I think you’ve gotta get the right combination of players, you’ve gotta get the right chemistry and everybody’s got to do a good job.
I mean, I don’t care what the identity is, it comes down to execution, whether it’s running or passing or punting, aight. It all comes down to your ability to execute. And we’ve had too many inconsistencies in execution. I mean, when you take drive-stoppers, OK, we had six offensive penalties. Those are drive-stoppers. Two of those penalties took points off the board. We got sacked five times. Sacks are drive-stoppers. Dropped balls are drive-stoppers. We only had one dropped ball. And turnovers are obviously drive-stoppers. The other team gets the ball and you don’t have it.
So when you add all those up, you should be at a much more efficient percentage than we were Saturday night. You can figure it out. So all those things come down to execution and people’s ability to execute to eliminate that. So we can keep working on it.”
Tony’s take: This comes back to what Saban said in his opening statement. It’s one thing for players to talk about what they want their identity to be, “joyless murderball” etc. It’s another to go out and execute that on the field. The goal might be to establish a physical identity, but what Saban wants more than that is a winning identity. That comes down to execution and eliminating some of the fatal flaws, or “drive killers” that it suffered against Texas.
On struggles in the intermediate passing game
“Look, when you have a pass play, it’s not designed to go five yards. It’s not designed to go 10 yards. It’s not designed to go 20 yards down the field. You have a pattern, and most patterns attack various levels. And then you read the defense and you decide where should I throw the ball? Sometimes it’s 20 yards down the field, sometimes you’ve gotta take the checkdown and it’s a five-yard play, aight. So we have made some explosive plays in our first two games. We have not been consistent in the – what you referred to as the – intermediate passing game and making decisions and get the ball out of our hand quickly and run good routes so we’re open and things are pretty decisive for the quarterback because of the picture. And everybody needs to do a better job. Protection needs to be better. The pocket doesn’t need to be collapsing on the quarterback with a four-man rush. So all those things need to get better, and we’re gonna work on it.”
Tony’s take: I’ve written about this a couple of times, but Jalen Milroe ranks last among SEC starting quarterbacks with a 25.5 passing grade on balls that have traveled between 10 and 19 yards through the air, according to Pro Football Focus. As is the case with picking up the blitz, the fault doesn’t lie completely on Milroe. However, Alabama is going to need the redshirt sophomore to be more consistent and not rely on home-run balls if it wants to beat quality opponents.
On how he tells the team to block out outside noise from former players
“Again, I talked to the players about internal standard versus external noise. I think that we didn’t play great. So people get upset that we get criticized. But why wouldn’t we get criticized if we didn’t play well? I mean, people call me and say, ‘Hey, man. This guy’s a jerk for saying this about you.’ No, he really isn’t. I mean, It’s right.
“We didn’t play good. I’m responsible for that. So we did all these things on offense that I just talked about, add them up, I’m responsible for that. In the real world when you don’t perform and you don’t produce, you probably get criticized, sometimes get penalized. Some people lose their job when they don’t perform well. That’s maybe even worse than losing a game when you can’t feed your family and your children and all that and make your house payment. I guess that’s worse.
“So I don’t really know what the noise is. I haven’t listened to one talk radio show. I haven’t read one newspaper. I have been focusing 100 percent of my time on the next team that we play, the last team that we played and what we need to do to fix that. And I think all the players would be better served and everybody in the organization would be better served if they all did that. Because what somebody else thinks really doesn’t matter. It’s all about what you do and how you respond to what you need to do so that you have a chance to be successful in the future.”
Tony’s take: Credit to Saban for not being soft. Too often we see coaches deflect blame. However, Saban is practicing what he preaches by taking his criticism on the chin and moving forward. If his players can do the same thing, Alabama should be able to learn and grow from the loss to Texas.
