Alabama's taking it easy this week? Are you pulling my leg?
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — It’s a bye week for Alabama, which means no opponent to prepare for, except to maybe get a little bit of a head start on the next foe, Texas A&M.
Although the team is welcoming the break, the extra week off this year isn’t something they’re entirely accustomed to. The Crimson Tide is traditionally off the final Saturday of October, and it will be again after three straight Southeastern Conference games, acting like a pause before the challenging final stretch of the season.
Alabama is practicing every day this week. A lot of it will be getting back to fundamentals, fixing mistakes along with some advance work on upcoming opponents.
For the coaches it also means a chance to hit the road in recruiting over the weekend. Meanwhile, the players will get a chance to put their feet up and watch some games on Saturday.
But it doesn’t mean that this will be an easy few days.
“I need to continue to work on my tackling, my tackling on the perimeter coming down, playing safety, in the SEC at that,” senior safety Jared Mayden said. “There’s a lot of big backs out there. I need to make sure I’m not just going up and hitting guys as hard as I can. I need to be able to hit and wrap up. Wrapping up is definitely something that’s on my focus.”
Here are five other points of emphasis for the Crimson Tide this week.
1] Recover
Alabama’s had a ridiculous number of injures this season, including some like junior wide receiver Henry Ruggs III (hip pointer) who could benefit from some extra rest.
“He’ll probably be sore for a few days, but we don’t think it’s an issue long-term,” Nick Saban said after Saturday’s 59-31 victory over Ole Miss.
Kicker Will Reichard (hip) and linebacker Markail Benton were held out of the Ole Miss victory, while Alabama is still being a little cautious with linebacker Terrell Lewis (knee).
“It’s a little bit day-to-day with how he can go about what he has to do,” Saban said.
2] Work on ball control on offense
Scoring touchdowns is obviously always the goal, but doing so and also eating up some of the clock could certainly help the defense.
“There’s been games where he’s told us to drive, and there’s some drives where he wants us to go fast,” junior wide receiver DeVonta Smith said about balancing up-tempo and ball-control priorities.
“it depends on who we’re playing. If they’re a team that plays fast too, he’ll tell us to slow it down, give the defense a little bit of a breather. But then again, you don’t always just want to sit up there and play the game slow. You want to use the speed of the offense.”
3] Set the offensive line
Deonte Brown returned last week and had significant playing time at both guard positions. Freshman Even Neal might have made the decision for coaches about who to play a little tougher as both he and Landon Dickerson had strong performances against the Rebels.
4] Continue to gel defensively
Alabama is playing with one returning starter on the defensive line and on one at linebacker. The secondary has more experience, but it has a pair of new starters too with Mayden and freshman Jordan Battle at the dime slot. Combined with two true freshmen at interior linebacker and true freshman D.J. Dale at nose tackle, and that’s a lot of people still figuring out how to play together as a unit.
“You want everybody to reset and focus on the next play,” Mayden said about minimizing mistakes. “You can’t stop that play from happening no more. We need to focus on the next play and get everybody on defense sound for the next play so all 11 guys can play fast.”
5] Get off the field, especially on third downs
Similar to what happened at South Carolina, Alabama’s defense was on the field for 88 plays against Ole Miss. It has to do better or the defense will tire down the stretch.
“If we play 20 more plays of defense every game that we play, the cumulative effect of that is times 12, so that’s a lot of plays and that’s a lot of wear and tear on some players,” Saban said.
