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Whew!
30-24 ... Tide Hangs On For Homecoming
Nick Saban showed his sense of humor in the post game interview,
and said consistency continues to be a problem for the offensive.
These post game comments came as
Coach Nick Saban ... How are we doing today? I have a message for everyone ... when we play, don't leave early. (laughter from the press pool) We want to make it interesting. We have guests here, we have recruits here. We want everybody to be entertained. (chuckling continues) But first of all, I'd like to say that this homecoming weekend was something special for me ... to go to the pep rally last night and really get a feel for the spirit here ... to get a feel for the passion that a lot of people have that have gone to the University of Alabama. It's a great opportunity for them to come back home. It's also a great home for us, and we appreciate the way people have welcomed us here. So, we're happy we were able to contribute our apart of it, even though it was a little closer than it needed to be. It was a good win for our team, and it was a good win for our players. I think the biggest lesson to be learned is there have now been two games where we were ahead 31-10 and 23-0, and we let the other team come back in the game on us because we don't continue to play offensively. We don't play with the same intensity as a football team. We don't play with the same aggressiveness. I've talked about this before ... that's "relief syndrome". You try to tell guys to play for 60 minutes in the game, the scoreboard means nothing. Play the next play ... dominate the guy you're playing against ... and don't let the scoreboard affect you. If you're ahead in the game it doesn't affect you, if you're behind in the game it doesn't affect you. About halfway through the second quarter out there, we lost some intensity. We didn't do very well in the second half offensively and had to play far to many plays in the second half. We got tired on defense and had a tough time stopping what is a pretty potent offensive with some pretty good skill guys. We felt fortunate to get two turnovers ... two interceptions ... at the end of the game and to be able to win the game. But also, to turn it back over after we got great field position and a chance to ice the game ... you know, those kind of plays are not winning football. We had more penalties today than what we'd like to have. We have to continue and work to improve as a team. I believe in this team, I choose this team, I like this team a lot. I just think we have to learn how to do some things better in a game with more consistency. That's been something that has been evident in two football games that we've played. We going to have to do a better job of putting things together offensively so people can't load the box to where we can't run the ball. And when they give us opportunities throwing the ball, we have to take them. We had some opportunities today ... we made a few, we could have made a few more. But we don't have a knockout punch as a team ... we need to have a knockout punch as a team. It gives the opportunity for a lot of other people to play. It helps your starters. I mean, we've got a lot of guys that laid it on the line out there today and were dog tired at the end of that game in terms of how they had to compete. We don't have a lot of depth, so I could have been an opportunity to get a lot of people in to play. You have to give Houston's players a lot of credit for coming back in games. But we knew they had the capacity to do that all along. Anytime anyone runs an offense like they do, they're going to have an opportunity to come back in some game and you're never ahead far enough. So, hopefully we'll learn this time around and be able to do this a little better in the future. It's going to be important to us when we get in our league play.
Press Pool ... Coach, in that end game situation when it's fourth down, how do you specifically defend that and what are you looking for?
Saban ... Well the way we defended it ... I think there's two options you have, and we have two options that we run. You either rush three guys, and they put three guys over on one side and throw it to them ... so you say we're going to play a 3-5-3 zone with man match ups, everybody is going to carry everyone down the field and we're going to have as many guys in the endzone as they have. Typically, if they're throwing it from the 50-yard line, that's how we'd play it. But with this quarterback and his ability to run, in that situation, we blitzed because we're going to make him throw the ball. And he had to throw it fast. They were on the 17-yd line and we weren't going to give him the opportunity to able to run it in the endzone. We covered them up pretty good and were in pretty good position. Simeon (Castille) made a good play.
How frustrating is it to see your offense put 23 points on the board in the 1st quarter and then 7 point the rest of the game ...
It's frustrating. Are you frustrated? I'm frustrated. I'll bet you that you sleep better tonight than I do, you wanna bet? (a few chuckles from the press pool) I'm sure you will ... but we've got to get it fixed. We've got to do more things and have more diversity. We've got to take what the defense gives us. We've got to have faith, trust and confidence in our players that they're going to go execute. And when they get the opportunity, they need to execute. You can't just run the ball. In this day and age in football you better be a very dominant team. And the more they put them up there (extra defenders in the box), the more we should have been passing it. You've got to trust and believe in the players you have that you're going to make plays. We had some opportunities to make plays. DJ (Hall) had a catch they overruled ...probably the right call ... I'm not complaining about that ... but we should have done more things like that in the game. It's how we scored a couple of times, so we should have taken more shots like that in the game.
What did Glenn Coffee do to get more carries in this game? question inaudible-"Did Terry Grant come out after he fumbled?"
Well no. We have two other guys that deserve to play. At the end of the day, if we could make it a perfect day, I'd hope all those three guys (Terry Grant, Glenn Coffee, Roy Upchurch) have an equal chance to play in a game. It didn't work out that way today. In other games, we gone in ... Terry carried it 20 times and Coffee carried it 7 and Upchurch carried it 3, so it's kind of hard. Sometime when you feel like the guy is running hard you want to run him more. We thought Glenn was running pretty good today.
Coach on at least two of their touchdowns, it looked like their plays were designed to get fast guys in open space and let them make a play. Is that a dimension that isn't quite there on your team?
Well, we're not doing that enough. We don't stretch the perimeter ... that's their offense though. They spread you out all over the field ... they're in empty (backfield) ... they've got receivers lined up 5-yards from the boundary so you have to go out there and cover them. And then they're going to throw the ball to #22 (Anthony Alridge) and he's going to get somebody in space and he's a fantastic player. He's extremely fast, and very quick and elusive. I think early in the game we played stuff pretty well. I think as the game wore on we got a little tired. We missed more tackles and lost leverage on him. He outran us a couple of times. That was a problem for us. Can anyone tell me the tale of the two halves relative to the number of plays? 29 plays in the first half and 50+ plays in the second half ... that's a lot.
Was there a reason Rolondo McClain didn't play in the first half? And when he came in the second half, how do you think he performed out there?
He did fine in the game. Rolondo didn't do anything wrong. He's doing fine, he's doing well. This team (Houston) is really a hard preparation. They've got I don't know how many multiple personnel groups that they put in the game. And they do different things out of all those groups. We had three or four or five different personnel groups that we're matching up. We had to make calls and checks based on what they did, whether the back was near or far or whatever. Early in the week, the multiples were very confusing. We've never played against this many multiples. I've never coached against this many multiples before. This was a week from hell for me. I didn't sleep good, I've got a bad cold. But we spent a lot of time on these guys to give our players the best opportunity. They did a good job for the most part, just gave up a couple of big plays. They hurt us with the screens on a couple of drives and we got a couple of bad penalties that gave them field position. In most cases, we had opportunities to make plays in the second half and couldn't finish. But the multiples were confusing to him. With Prince and Mustin, you've got two guys that have experience. They probably understand the sub packages better. So we just decided, "Hey, let's take a load off this guy," so he doesn't feel like he has to make all these calls and do all this stuff. He was frustrated with it too. So it worked out well. And then when he got to play today, he did a fine job.
In the second half do you feel like the play calling got more conservative than you wanted it to be ... and the talk about belief in the players making plays ... is that more with the guys who are calling plays?
I'm not second guessing our play callers. I'm saying we have to have more balance in what we do. And we have to be able to take advantage with what the defense gives us. They (Houston) were throwing caution into the wind in the second half. They had them up there, they were running strong fires, they were running corner fires, they were running Sam-Will blitz every time. You know, it's hard to block that stuff and pop runs on it. But we have to able to make plays in the passing game. However, we tie it together to do that, we have to do it. But we also have to be able to execute it because we had some ways to do it but just didn't execute. So it goes both ways. But I'm not second guessing any play calling because they all get called through me so I could tell them to pass it at any time.
also read post game interview transcripts from ...
Nick Saban (Head Coach)
DJ Hall (#22 WR Sr. 6'-2" 195 lbs. 3VL ... Choctawhatchee High School, Ft. Walton Beach FL)
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