Alabama LB Christian Harris Discusses Mistakes on Defense at Ole Miss

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama sophomore linebacker Christian Harris had a lot to say about his defense and how it played against Ole Miss this past Saturday.

In a virtual press conference conducted with the media via Zoom on Monday afternoon, Harris talked extensively on his emotions following the Crimson Tide's 63-48 win over the Rebels.

"As a defense, of course you never want to see an offense put up those types of numbers, especially when we prepare all throughout the week," Harris said. "But like I said, we missed tackles, of course that bothers us. They ran on us like crazy — that’s something we really harp on, stopping the run, so of course we want to go out with an edge. We’re going to fix all that this week and prepare for Saturday."

In addition to the 48 points that Alabama gave up to Ole Miss, the Rebels were able to tally 379 passing yards and 268 rushing yards for a total of 647 yards.

Despite all of the murmurs among the Crimson Tide fanbase, Harris believes that the team's defense will be fine if it simply focuses on a few errors.

"Honestly, I feel like as long as we focus on executing the plan and making tackles, I think we’ll be fine," Harris said. "That’s one thing we messed up on last week. Of course we’re going to have to improve on that and work on it even more so we’re good by Saturday."

Harris harped on the fact that the Crimson Tide's primary issue this past weekend in Oxford was the missed tackles. While many have blamed the issue on the poor weather conditions, Harris knows that there's more to it than that.

"I think one thing that really hurt us this past week was the fact that, like I keep saying, we kept missing tackles," Harris said. "A lot of the tackles we would’ve made, they probably would’ve ended up punting the ball and stopping the drive, helping us get off the field. When you miss tackles, you let them create more plays, stay on the field for a longer time, it just lasts a lot longer. If we focus on making tackles and not missing as many as we did, we’ll get off the field. We’ll be better as a defense."

Ole Miss had 31 first downs, went 9-for-17 on third downs and converted all four of its attempts on fourth down. If the Crimson Tide want to overcome No. 3 Georgia this coming weekend in Tuscaloosa, a lot of the outcome will be determined by if the Alabama defense can improve its game over the next five days.

For Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban, learning from the team's mistakes this past weekend is the only way this team can get better.

"The only mistake that would be is that we don't learn from the mistakes that we made so that we can get better in the future, work harder at making corrections and get everybody to be responsible to do their job a little bit better, coaches and players included," Saban said on Monday. "That's the way we can improve."

Harris is already working on fixing those mistakes, saying that he watched film on his own time over the weekend and will be doing so again with the team today.

“We’re actually doing that today," Harris said. "I watched them personally by myself yesterday and I feel like no question we got to get better working on tackling but we’re on to a new week now so we just fix all those things that we messed up last game, prepare this week and face it on Saturday.”