Nick Saban talks building experience on defense
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama head football coach Nick Saban talked briefly about his team’s preparations for its upcoming game against Texas A&M this weekend.
One key topic that Saban touched on was his inexperienced players on defense. This season, Alabama has been forced to start a young interior due to injuries, including true freshmen linebackers Shane Lee and Christian Harris.
“We do as much as we can," Saban said during his press conference Wednesday. "We try to expose them to things that they have not seen before that they will see in the next three games. We spent a little more time on this particular game. We spent a lot of time — probably an inadvertent, relatively speaking, amount of time — to doing walkthroughs. 11-on-11 walkthroughs so that you’re getting a multitude of reps with these guys to see things without wearing them out and running them all over the place.
“We’ve done extra meetings to try and increase their knowledge and ability to go out and feel confident in terms of what they’re supposed to do.”
Confidence is key, especially with younger players, and one of the best ways to build up that confidence is with experience.
However, the only way to build experience is to go out on the field in games and see playing time.
“There’s nothing you can do to teach experience,” Saban said. “The only way you get that is to go do it, and the more experience these guys get I think the better they’ll play, the less errors they’ll make, and because you get exposed to more and more things then they’re more comfortable to adjust on all those things.”
The only way to learn how to handle situations is to, as Saban said, go do it.
Saban likened his preparation for games to classes being taught in school. Alabama is a university, after all.
"AP classes, advanced placement,” Saban said. “That’s what we’re teaching. It’s a challenge to make an A. Those are hard classes. Hard to make an A, but that’s what we’re trying to do, and these guys are working their tail off trying to do it.”
Saban also briefly touched on injuries for the team, including redshirt-junior Chris Owens, who is currently out with a knee injury.
“Chris Owens is probably very questionable for this week,” Saban said. “He hasn’t been able to do anything in practice — probably get him back maybe next week.
“We still haven’t made that decision completely yet.”
Freshman place kicker Will Reichard returned to practice, but is still day-to-day. Saban noted that he kicked on Wednesday, but it has yet to be decided whether he will be available this weekend.
