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to Home Games 2008 front page read Saban's comments from Tulane ... Western Kentucky ... Kentucky ... Ole Miss ... Ark. State ... and other interviews from 2007 Alabama Closes Out Ole Miss 24-20 These are the post game comments and interviews with Coach Nick Saban following the Ole Miss game … Coach Nick Saban … It's obviously a great win for us. The crowd was fantastic out there today. A lot of support especially at the end of the game. I'm not sure that didn't affect the momentum of the game as much as anything. We're not just focused on winning, we're focused a lot on how we win. It was a big goal for us today, and I talked about it at halftime with our team today that we go out and play and do a better job in the second half. And obviously we didn't do that. So that was a goal we wanted to accomplish today, especially with a 24-3 lead at halftime. We got a penalty that started their drive, which ended up in a fake field goal, which we did a poor job on. We all knew on the sidelines they were going to fake. I mean how times do you see the holder come up and tell the offensive line that it's a play on a field goal? Just things like that. That was huge in the game in terms of momentum. We need to play better offensively in the 2nd half in terms of ball control and field position. We turned the ball over in the 2nd half on two occasions. I said it all week a long. Ole Miss is really a good football team. A'ight? I believed it. I don't know if our players believed it, but they do a fantastic job and have great players. It was a great win for our team, aight? But we didn't get done what we wanted to get done the way we wanted to get it done. But when you win a game in this league, you have to be pleased and happy about it. And I think we all have to self-analyze a little bit what we're doing in the 2nd half ... as coaches, as players. Because the last three games we have not played as well in the second half as the first. And I think our players play hard, and I think they play with great intensity and I have a tremendous amount of respect for what our players have put into this season. Maybe that's why they play so well in the first half because of all that they do. But we have to find a way to have more consistency in the game and that's going to be critical to us in the future. I thought in the second quarter we made some big plays, a couple of interceptions or whatever, a couple of big plays offensively. But that's the kind of thing we have to do more of. Defensively, we gave up a couple of big plays and that contributed to them scoring. We also turned the ball over twice, which affected field position in the second half. We're happy to win. I'm very pleased and happy. I'm happy for our players, I'm happy for our fans and I'm happy for the University of Alabama. But at the same time we've got work to do. (Terrance) Cody is probably going to be ... we're going to do an MRI. Don't think he has a surgical knee but that will be determined for sure when we do the MRI. He's got a similar injury to what Smitty (Andre Smith) had early in the season. The extent of that injury will be determined in the MRI so I suspect he'll be out for a couple of weeks but we're not sure about that until they do the MRI. We're very fortunate to have Jimmy Andrews as our team physician here and Dr. Cain his assistant. Those guys give our team fantastic medical care and we have a tremendous amount of confidence in those guys, so I'm sure they'll handle this situation as well as possible. Press Pool ... Can you talk about the struggles in the 2nd half ... Have you found a common thread in the 2nd half that's been giving you problems? No. I mentioned most of them already ... just about all of them. We end up playing a lot of plays on defense. We give up some plays on defense and don't play with the same intensity. I think have to be able to change it up and mix it up a little more. We can't make the mental errors we continue to make. And we have to play with more consistency on offense. That's what affects the momentum of the game more than anything to me is how you play offense and when you score and those types of things. So we need to do all those things. Even the field position in the 2nd half was not all that good. And we have to quit doing stupid stuff. I mean no disrespect to the player that did it, but if you get a penalty for scoring a touchdown ... (voice rises) please act like you've been there and have enough maturity to say "I'm a good player, I made a good play, everybody knows it, I don't need to do all the bullshit, a'ight, to get a 15-yard penalty that makes us kick the ball from the 15-yard line. Selfish! And it hurts the team! So ... I didn't see the roughing the passer. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But that's a discipline-type deal too. Discipline is doing what you're supposed to do, when you're supposed to do it, the way it's supposed to get done. Self-discipline means you can do it in any circumstance, whether you feel like doing it or not. You make yourself do it and that's where your consistency comes from. It's also where your perseverance comes from. Because if you don't have it, you can't do that. There's nobody in this room that feels like doing what we have to do everyday. But you make yourself do it because it's the right thing to do and it's what you want to accomplish. That's self-discipline. So we need to show a little more of that in the second half. So if there's a common thread, I'd say that might be it. Coach Saban, getting back to Terrence Cody ... can you talk about the thinking behind him coming in at fullback? I don't think there's any rocket science to it. I mean the guy is a great big guy that is very powerful that took almost the whole side of the line and moved it on that play. It would have been a better question if you had said "Why didn't you do it sooner?" (press room bursts into laughter, Saban smiles). But maybe since I'm on the verge of a tirade you kind of lost your guts a little bit (still smiling). Coach, why didn't you use Terrence Cody at fullback sooner? (more laughter) (Saban pauses, and smiles) We've talked about doing it. This bye-week probably gave us a little chance to do some things we wanted to try and do from a personnel standpoint because you're got a little more time to work on it. If you don't do that stuff in camp, it's hard to do it during the course of a regular week. You can't just put the guy over there for two plays and say "Aight, go do it." He's got to learn a little more. So we've been wanting to do it and that's the reason it happened now. We tried some other things personnel wise ... some of them worked, some of them didn't. But we need to continue to improve in terms of having more players being able to contribute in a more consistent fashion. Could you also address taking the redshirt off Brad Smelley and what the thinking was there? Well, Brad's been playing really well and is a good threat in the passing game. Every week the same discussion comes up. Are we going to play Brad Smelley this week because he's such a good receiver in the passing game? He's a tight end, but we also thought he might help us on special teams and he did play on some special teams too. To be quite honest, the offense has been wanting to play him for about three weeks. I'm the one that's been dragging my feet, but during the bye-week he did such a good job when we practiced against each other that I said "Hey, this guy can help our team. We need to play him. he deserves to play." Coach, you had emphasized during the off-week ... and it occurred again today with Glenn Coffee fumbling the ball in the 4th quarter. Is it something that's self-defeating to talk about? How do you deal ... I think you have to look at technically what happened. I'm not sure on this one it was all his fault. You know, we let two guys run through the A-gap and hit him before he ever gets the ball. I didn't see any replays. I don't have any opportunity to do that so I'm not sure if it was his fault. I know we didn't block the play correctly. So other people can assume some of the blame for it. But we're going to technically get him to keep doing the things to help him not fumble the football. I'm not sure that any of those things were a problem with him today. After Cody's injury, what kind of job did Josh Chapman do and did that change anything you guys did defensively? Not really. The game kind of changed so we didn't really have an opportunity to do it. Josh has been doing a good job all year because he's been rotating in with Cody. Cody plays 5 or 6 plays, then he's out for 3 or 4. That's been going on for the entire season and Josh has been doing a very nice job. I think he did a good job today. The running plays, the true running plays ... not the Wildcat stuff, not the empty formation with #22 (Dexter McCluster) at quarterback, which we messed up a couple of times on. You know, they do a lot of stuff and my hat's off to the defensive players for doing as good a job as they did of adjusting to everything. And the job that the coaches did in getting them ready to do it. It's so hard to get a look at it (Wildcat offense) in practice. To find a guy that can take the snap from center and do all that stuff, it's difficult. And they (Ole Miss) did it a couple of ways today in the second half that we weren't ready for, we did not prepare for. They were just a play here and a play there, but they kept drives alive. They weren't big plays, but ... they had 5 wideouts in and we missed an assignment on the quarterback draw, which was a critical play. That's good coaching on their part. That's good coaching on their part and we need to do a better job of adjusting to those things. But you can't be prepared for things you've never seen before. And when you're good ... and I tell our players this all the time ... and you get ahead in the game, you're going to see stuff you've never seen before and you're going to have to adjust in the game. That's part of it. Coach, can you talk about what you saw on the flea-flicker when John Parker hit McCoy in the endzone? It looked like one of his better throws of the year. I wanted to throw it before that, but it's just one of those plays we had geared up in the game that we wanted to throw in a certain part of the field. The first time we wanted to do it we were probably too deep. We ended up kicking a field goal. Every week you have a couple of trick plays. That was one of them this week. It was a great throw by John Parker and a really good catch by Mike McCoy. On that same wavelength, could you assess Wilson's performance today? I thought John Parker did a good job today. We had a drop or two. Nick Walker's drop was a big one at the end of the game. That would have been a 1st down and we might have been able to take the air out of the ball. They would have probably had to use their timeouts and we would have probably had to get one more 1st down. But we were going to be under three minutes there and have an opportunity to really shrink the game. I was actually talking to the defense when he threw the pick. That was difficult too because we were in field goal range. We gave away points. But I know this ... the middle of the field safety intercepted it, and he's not supposed to be throwing the ball down the middle of field if there's a middle of the field safety on that play. Aight? So even though I didn't see it, just putting two and two together, that wasn't a good decision. Dont'a Hightower has a few good plays in this game. How can you assess his progress and maturity halfway through the season? He's played well for us. The guy doesn't play like a freshman. He really plays well, he practices well, he's got a maturity about him that he can stay focused and do the things he needs to do to continue to improve. He makes plays in the game. He's very instinctive. He's got great size and speed. He's been an outstanding player for us. That was a big play (the stop on 4th & Inches), but Bobby Greenwood was the guy that made the play. He didn't make the tackle, but he made the play. It's his job to close and spill the ball. The ball bounced outside, the linebacker scraped and the pulling guard can't get him and that's how it was supposed to work so Bobby did a really good job. But Dont'a has played really well. for us all year. I think he's got a good head on his shoulders. He's got a great family. He keeps things in perspective. For a young guy, he does a great job of preparing himself every week and he hasn't been up and down. A lot of the freshman guys are up and down, and it's all about maturity. Do you have the maturity to do the things you need to do to become a better player. A lot of them can't do that, but he's done that. Julio (Jones) has done that. Mark Ingram's done that. We need more of those guys to do that because there's a lot of them in the two deep (rotation). Coach, you had 10 on the field on defense one play. What happened there ... Well, we called for Dime Rabbits. We have two different fronts that we play against four wide-out red, which is Dime, which means 6 defensive backs. The guy came out because he heard Dime Rabbits. But the guy that's supposed to go in didn't go in. But we played pretty good with 10 on that play (smiles and the press room laughs). They threw a screen and nobody rushed because we only had three linemen in there, but we played the screen pretty well. I think we ought to do that more often (smiling). Coach, you had 107 rushing yards and it seemed especially on 1st down that you had a hard time establishing the run. Was Ole Miss that good up front or was it something ya'll weren't doing ... They got them all up in there (stacked the box) OK? The play a lot of 8 man fronts. It's hard to run the ball to the tight end side because they play an overshifted defense. They made an adjustment at halftime. Sometime you just have to throw it. You just have to have confidence in the people and throw it. Sometimes the best down to throw it on is 1st down. We did that quite a bit today. We didn't do it as much in the 2nd half but we did it a few times. But when we play these teams that play like that, you have to make them pay. question inaudible ... Were there any other injuries? I don't think so. I saw the doctors and trainers and they didn't mention anything else significant. Aight? Thank you.
click the link to read the post game comments following the Ole Miss game ... click here for other Homes Games 2008 interviews John Parker Wilson (#14 QB Sr. 2L 6'-2" 211 lbs. Hoover High, Hoover AL)
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