Everything Alabama Coach Nick Saban Said After 30-6 Victory over Mississippi State

Saban went out of his way to praise the way the Crimson Tide played as it headed into the bye week with a big homecoming win.

Author:
Christopher Walsh
Publish date:
Oct 23, 2022 12:45 AM EDT

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Alabama Crimson Tide

Here's everything Nick Saban had to say during his postgame press conference following the Alabama Crimson Tide's 30-6 victory over Mississippi State:

I was really pleased with the way our guys competed in the game tonight. I challenged them in terms of how they were going to respond. [Will you] respond with your ability, your positive energy, attitude, how you block, how you tackle, the enthusiasm that you play with. And I was pleased with the way the guys went out competed, had fun. There wasn’t a lot of anxiety. There wasn't always perfect execution, but you know to me that's a start. It's kind of time to answer the bell, and now the challenge is we need to build on that. We have a bye week coming coming up, and we got a lot of guys that we need to try and get healthy, and I think we'll get some guys back. But I think the number one thing is we want to build on sort of the chemistry of how we competed in the game today. The defense played really well tonight. That last drive we should be able to take the air out of the ball on offense. We couldn't run the ball very well tonight and that's something we definitely need to improve on. So hopefully Bryce [Young] getting a week off here now will really help him maybe get back healthy. Guys had a good week of preparation and they went out and played a good game and I’m really pleased and proud of them.

How did you feel the dime defended the run?

They got six points. So, you know … we just did some things different after we got started and saw that they were running the ball, so we stopped the run pretty well after that. So I'm pleased with the way we played on defense. The team gets six points and we’re going to complain about the way they stopped the run? We were trying to stop the pass. I thought we did that pretty well until the last drive, when we had two fourth downs and couldn’t get off the field, and didn't get off the field. We got a penalty in the end zone, another penalty in the end zone, so, you know, they gave up six points and I think that's pretty good. I’d let a team run the ball all day long if they only get six points. Would you be all right with that?

On Eli Ricks:

I thought he did a good, job, you know? He gave up one throw. Kool-Aid … when you’re playing five under-man, you’re supposed to be underneath the guy, so the guy shouldn’t be able to catch a comeback on you. Caught one on him, caught one on Kool-Aid on fourth-and-10. But I thought he played well. Prepared well all week and played pretty well in the game.

On Alabama trying to get the shutout:

I think the guys got a lot of pride in what they do. The whole emphasis is get back to playing for 60 minutes, don't worry about the scoreboard. Quit worrying about outcomes and play one play at a time. And keep playing in the game. I thought they tried to do that. I just thought we had some opportunities to make plays in that drive and we didn't, and they took advantage of it.

On Jermaine Burton:

Look, I don’t know how many of you have been in a situation like that, but I talked to him. He was scared. I was scared. Some of our other players were scared. I think you learn to respect other people because we have a responsibility to do that regardless of the circumstance that we're in. I talked to the guy. We had him in a counseling program. It's not an anger management program as people announced today. Nobody ever said that. That's not the problem. That’s not the issue. But it's about having the proper respect for other people. I didn't think it was necessary to suspend the guy. If you knew the whole story maybe you wouldn't ether. But I'm not going to divulge that.

Going from 17 penalties last week down to three:

Well it's been something that we've been emphasizing all year long and finally today we had a little better discipline. I also think that we had a little better disposition about energy and enthusiasm, and not playing with the anxiety, and sometimes when you play with anxiety you make a lot of bad decisions because you get a little too emotional about what you're doing and you decide to hit a guy, or hang on a hold, or whatever it is. I don't think that's the way you want to compete in the game. You wanna have high achievement, motivation and low anxiety, and make good choices and decisions. And I thought the players did a better job of that today.

Are opposing teams going after Bryce Young?

You’d have to ask the other teams about that. I can’t really comment on that. We have to do a good job of protecting him so he doesn't get hit. That's what we can control.

On Brian Branch:

Brian’s played well for us all year. I thought he had a really good game, you know ,tonight. He's the sixth DB, he plays the fifth DB a lot. Malachi plays it when we go to dime. He's in a position that he's actually almost playing like an outside linebacker, and he does a really good job with that because he's a he's a physical guy, and he's very instinctive. That's how we stopped the run a little better by, you know, starting to have some edge pressure with him. That took them out of that , and he did a pretty good job the whole game.

On the offense:

We didn’t play very well, with any consistency, on offense. That starts with what I said before. We couldn’t run the ball very well. That affects play-action passes. I thought we had some RPO throws that we should have taken that we didn't take and we missed a couple. I think Bryce played really well in the game, but I think get him back 100 percent will really help. And I think he can practice, you know some, at some point in time before we get ready for the next game that would probably help them as well.

On defensive line, and younger players filling in:

Well I think that's what we tell all the young guys, and it's kind of a hard concept for them to understand sometimes. Don't worry about what your circumstance is right now, but make sure you're doing the work and putting in the time to prepare yourself so if you get an opportunity you'll be ready to take advantage of it. I thought you know [Damon] Payne did a pretty good job of that. We really only had four defensive linemen in the game. The most we ever played with was two, sometimes only one, and played a whole bunch of backers. So you get a little small, which can affect your ability to stop the run, but you gotta scheme it the best you can with the guys that you got and hopefully we'll get some of these guys back. But it's also a good experience for those guys and they'll be more ready to play the next time.

On 11 different players making receptions:

Well I thought Mississippi State did a good job of mixing up their pressures, dropping eight guys. I thought the receiver did a really good job on a couple of scramble situations which turned out to be a couple big plays – probably the only explosive plays we really had came off those types of plays. But I think our receivers are making progress. I think they're playing better. And I think it's important that they continue to improve because when you have a guy like Bryce you want to be able to take advantage of his talent, and receivers doing a good job can certainly contribute that to a large degree.

Injury update on defensive linemen:

They're day-to-day but hopefully we’ll get one back for sure maybe, maybe both, but it's probably too early to tell.