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Turns Back Tulane 20-6 This post game transcript is the comments of Head Coach Nick Saban following the Tulane game : Coach Nick Saban ... First of all, it’s great to win. But it’s not always great to win when you don’t feel like you played relative to your capabilities and I certainly didn’t think we did that tonight. It’s a little disappointing. It’s was our goal to play with consistency and kind of show who we are and show we have the ability to come and play with consistency. But we weren’t able to do that. But we were still able to win. We made plays on special teams, which obviously contributed to the win. The defense didn’t always play great … gave up a couple of big plays and had some untimely penalties and made poor decisions. But they kept them out of the end zone and that was the difference in the game. You know, offensively we had no consistency. We couldn’t get things done on 3rd down. We didn’t run the ball effectively and I think some of the issues we had in the offensive line probably contributed to that. But I still feel like the players we had in there are capable of playing well enough and should have been able to play well enough offensively to move the ball and do some good things. There’s a formula you have to follow to be successful. It starts with the determination you have and come from being able to create a mindset and intensity about you … a sense of urgency and enthusiasm … that’s going to help you have the spirit everyday that you go out and do your job and do work to get better and improve. Every opportunity you have to play is an opportunity that you have to show who you are. We did not make progress as a team. And obviously you’re going to ask me about last week versus this week … and obviously it had an effect on our team. I know I’ve been criticized for trying to … right after the game … to talk about things that people need to be focusing on. I’m talking about players, people in our organization, our team … so that we can get better and can improve. You’ve got to think about the right stuff. We’re going to get better because of this. We’ll improve because of this and we’ll learn from it. You can try and tell your kids sometimes not to do certain things, like don’t touch the stove, but sometimes they’ve got to figure it out for themselves. We’ve had these lessons that we’ve tried to learn before. We certainly need to continue to have the determination and the spirit we need to be able to improve as a team. That starts with how you practice and how you prepare. So it’s my responsibility to get our people to do that and obviously we didn’t do a very good job of that today. But we won. It’s great to be 2-0. But certainly if we don’t make progress, we’re not going to be the type of football team I think we can be. The whole goal we have is to play to our capabilities. And I think if we can do that, then we’ll succeed as coaches and we can be a better team. Press pool … Coach, Rolando (McClain) had 15 tackles. Corey Reamer made some big plays. Talk about your linebacker play tonight. Coach Saban … Well, I think they (Tulane) stayed in regular a lot, which we probably didn’t have enough ammo for it in all honesty. People do so many things where you have nickel and dime and all this stuff. They just didn’t do that. They stayed in regular the whole time and that left all of our linebackers on the field. I thought they played extremely well in the game. They even stayed in that regular on 3rd down quite a bit. And even at the end of the game when they moved the ball they were in regular people quite a bit. That puts a lot of responsibility on Corey Reamer in terms of adjustments and he did a really good job. But we didn’t get pressure tonight with the four man rush, I think we only had one sack and Corey had it. We didn’t create a lot of negative plays. And we didn’t get off the field on 3rd down as often as we needed to. And we had several opportunities to get out of drives and we didn’t. But the one thing we did do was we played extremely well in the red zone. The missed two field goals and we held them to field goals on two other occasions. You have to give the defense a lot of credit from that standpoint. What’s the nature of what happened with Marlon Davis and how do you think (Brian) Motley performed when we came in? It’s the first time Motley’s played and I’m sure he’ll learn a lot from his performance. We had Motley playing a different place, (David) Ross playing a different place and Mike Johnson playing a different place. So you actually had three different people playing from what we had last week. So we kind of lost our continuity in our offensive line. I think the guys are capable of playing a lot better and we’re certainly going to have to get them to improve. I can’t comment on how we played, but all in all, we didn’t get them blocked up front. But there were three sacks out there that weren’t the offensive line. The tailback didn’t block the corner blitz once. The quarterback didn’t throw the ball hot once and the tailback missed his blitz pickup on the other side and we got sacked three times. I don’t know how many times we got sacked … it was too many, but I can tell you on those three it wasn’t the offensive line. Everybody thinks every time there’s a sack it’s the offensive line. Well, it isn’t always the offensive line. Especially when there’s edge pressure. But we obviously didn’t control the line of scrimmage like we’d like to. And those are the things we have to work on improving. And Marlon? Marlon pulled a hamstring. I don’t know how bad. Leigh Tiffin got hit in the head. Javy (Javier Arenas) got hit in the head. Those are the three guys that had issues in the game. I’m hopeful that all those guys will be OK. We think Smitty (Andre Smith) will be OK for this week, but it’s still going to be day to day. We also think that Earl Alexander … we’ll probably do another bone scan on him and see if his foot settles down. If it does, he’ll be ready to play. Could you comment on the play of Mark Ingram, particularly on the scoring drive in the second half? Well, I thought Mark played pretty well. He certainly made some outstanding runs when there wasn’t much there. It was a great touchdown run that he made. He made a couple of other pretty good runs. They weren’t long runs, but they were good runs for 7, 8, 9 yards. Mark has probably been consistently the best guy with the ball in his hands. Hopefully he can continue to improve. Glenn Coffee has played extremely well for us. He had a fumble tonight, which is a negative for him. But we’re confident those two guys can be a really good backfield tandem for us. We tried to get Terry Grant involved in a couple of things for us. We kind of got away from our game plan a little bit, you know, him on the perimeter in terms of maybe being a receiver. We need to get better play out of everyone … everyone. When you don’t do the little things right it affects everybody’s ability to do their job. So everybody needs to do a little better job, including me. You were talking about special teams improvement as one of your things this week … I guess two touchdowns would probably speak to that. Could you talk about each of those individual plays … Javy’s run and the punt block … We were really in punt safe, which isn’t anything more than a hold-up return because you’re just trying to make sure they don’t fake the ball … it was like a 4th and 2 situation about mid-field. Most of the time in situations like that it’s just a middle return and you try to wall everybody out. And I thought when he didn’t hit it up the middle … well he started up the middle and then reversed field to the other side … that he might be going backwards. But he’s got a unique knack for making big plays, especially in space. He has an ability to make people miss and that was a fantastic run. And Roy Upchurch … we were in a return and he was the force guy and went up and under on the wing and slipped the wing and blocked the kick. He almost blocked another one later on. He was the only guy rushing. You’ve said … talking about last year … playing to the level of your competition. Is that something that just comes with time? I’m a little frustrated that we can’t seem to get that the way we’d like to get it. It comes from having the attitude, the desire, the determination … whatever you want to call it … to play to your capabilities and be the best you can be so you’re not very easily satisfied. We seem to be too easily satisfied and look for … “Well we played well. Do we still have to practice hard and do all this stuff?” Well, doing all this stuff is what got you to where you are. It’s why we played physical. It’s a mindset too. The biggest lack of enthusiasm on that field tonight came from a lack of intensity, which come from mental energy, which comes from your commitment and desire to do something. We didn’t have the kind of mental energy we need, and it’s not really emotional. It really is internal in terms of who you are. We challenged the players on ‘who you are’ and ‘are you for real?’ We’re going to be for real when we learn to play with consistency. To me consistent football players dominate the opposition. That doesn’t mean you beat ‘em up all the time on the scoreboard and beat them bad in numbers, but physically and psychologically from the way you play they can’t hang in there with you. I thought we did some of that last week, and we didn’t do that at all tonight. And you have to give the Tulane players a lot of credit. They played hard, they played tough and they played physical. My hat is off to them. Coach, it looked like there was more emphasis on the pass. Does that take away from the physical play? We didn’t have more emphasis on the pass. We want to have balance in our offense. We didn’t run it very well. We threw it a few times and completed a few. But we didn’t have any consistency in our drives. On that first 3rd down we get a guy open and the ball gets batted down. There’s a lot of things we need to improve on. We didn’t have it in our mind that we were going to pass the ball any more than we did last week. We just couldn’t run it effectively and it created a lot of situations where we needed to pass. After (Glenn) Coffee’s fumble in the 3rd quarter, they got the ball in pretty good field position and the defense gets them three and out. Talk about how big that series was. I meant to mention that earlier … after that series, and then the guy missed the field goal we spread them out with four wideouts and that’s how we played the rest of the game so that the defense declared itself and we were able to move the ball better and that’s what we did in the touchdown drive. But that was a huge event. The fumble was a bad thing, but the defensive stop was outstanding and the ensuing drive for a touchdown was really one of the more positive things that we did in the game. How has Rolando’s (McClain) leadership on the defense evolved and was tonight kind of an example of him taking over … I think he really played well in the game tonight. He made a few mistakes, but I think they all did. But his leadership has been very effective day in and day out. He’s a great competitor and he affects other people in a positive way. He’s got a lot of pride about what he does and he certainly did a good job tonight. I think that mental toughness that the defense showed was probably the difference in the game ... to get those stops in the red area. There were four stops in the red area. There were two missed field goals, but that’s having the right kind of attitude about trying to keep them out of the endzone. I know what kind of competitor he is and how that affects everyone else. All right, thank you very much.
Click for post game interview transcripts from Tulane ... click here for other Homes Games 2008 interviews Corey Reamer (#13-LB Jr.-1L 6'-4" 218 lbs. Hoover High, Hoover AL) Rashad Johnson (#49-DB Sr.-3L 6'-0" 186 lbs. Sulligent High, Sulligent AL)
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