First Scrimmage Gives Alabama Snapshot of Team's Progress
The University of Alabama football team held its first scrimmage of fall camp on Saturday afternoon inside Bryant-Denny Stadium and Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban and company were glad to get some normalcy back, in what's been an unusual preseason in the COVID-19 era.
Just over two hours and 143 plays later, Saban addressed the media via Zoom to offer insight into what he has seen so far from the group as a whole and a few positions specifically.
"It’s exciting for me," Saban said. And to go back in the stadium today was exciting because every step you take makes it feel like, yeah, we are going to play a game.
"I think today’s scrimmage was a lot of what we expected for the eighth practice of the year, only the third practice that we’ve had really in pads. But I think it was a good opportunity to get players out on the field, see what they know, see how they could sustain a focus and a competitive level. I think everybody has to self-assess; that’s what a competitive situation gives everybody an opportunity to do. Sort of self-assess: Where am I? Am I in good enough physical condition to be able to sustain my effort, my mental and physical toughness, stay focused on doing my job. Have the mental toughness not to say, ‘Oh man, it’s really hot today and I can’t think about what I’m supposed to do.’ So all of this is a great opportunity, I think, for people to self-assess on where they are and tell themselves the truth about where they are.
"I think for us as coaches, we have to tell them the truth about where they are. I think that comes to each individual in terms of their physical development at their position and what they have to do to play winning football, and what we need to improve on as a team. Obviously after we watch this film, we’ll have a lot better indication about how players did. A lot of the stuff was game-like today, but we also had a lot of situational things.
"So it’s not necessarily how you did today. It’s really about where you can go and how good you can be, and that’s what we really want our players to stay focused on."
As in most years, all eyes were on the quarterback position on Saturday. Redshirt junior Mac Jones led the first team, while redshirt freshman Paul Tyson led the second team offense. Freshman Bryce Young was held out of practice along with others.
"I think Mac did some good things," Saban said. "I think he had like three touchdown passes and I think he was 21-for-36 but I just think that Mac’s gotta play within himself, be confident, be positive, not beat himself up when he makes bad plays and that’s part of the maturity level of a competitor that his game experience is going to help him do and I think his experiences leading up to the game will help him do as well.
"I think the other guys — they’ve got work to do — just pace of play. Speed of the game. The game speeds up, the rush speeds up, you’ve gotta be comfortable being uncomfortable with how fast the game goes so I think those guys are going to improve with the experiences they have relative to that.”
Offensive line will be a strength for Alabama this season with four returning starts, and one of the few question marks with the unit, if any, will be who lines up at center? Well, Saban gave the media three players to choose from on Saturday.
"We feel good about three guys that can play center for us," Saban said. "Those two guys [Darian Dalcourt and Chris Owens] can play and I think both those guys have done very, very well. They made improvements, and I think they have good knowledge and experience. And these guys are -- Darrian is only playing center. Everybody else is moving around to play. We’ve also played Emil at center some too. He’s done a nice job, and he’s done a nice job of developing at guard. I think we need to develop depth on the offensive line. I think the experience shows in all those players and I think if we can stay healthy there, we can have a pretty good offensive line.
With questions looming large in the secondary as to who will step alongside junior cornerback Patrick Surtain II, Saban noted younger guys that fans need to keep an eye on as fall camp progresses.
“Brian Branch and Malachi Moore, you know both have been playing Star," Saban said. "They’re both young players and they both have shown the potential to play the position and to play winning football at the position. It’s certainly a position of need for us. We talked before about losing four starters out of five guys last year and a lot of experience and Patrick Surtain could obviously play star but he’s so valuable at corner you hate to move him in there. Marcus Banks and Josh Jobe have both made significant progress at corner but those two guys have shown promise and hopefully they’re going to be able to help us this year.”
Outside linebacker is a position group that the Crimson Tide need to see play well in 2020, given that last season, the defense only sacked the quarterback 32 times, which was tied for 42nd in the country.
"Chris Allen and Ben Davis are older guys that have experience at the position, and they’ve done well, and we have several freshmen -- Drew Sanders and Will Anderson both have shown some promise," Saban said. "They’re still working through understanding exactly what to do and how to do it, but they’re both guys that I think can probably contribute to the team. I think we have some other guys at linebacker in general who might be able to develop and help us this year, as well.”
Overall, Saban seemed pleased with the development of his team. He appeared especially happy that his players have been able to cast out all outside noise and distractions up to this point.
"I think there’s been a bit of a transition psychologically for players, coaches and everyone else," Saban said. "Because it has been a long time and it’s not been normal and there has been a lot of uncertainty about what’s going to happen next that you kind of get in the mode that we’re practicing to practice, aight, which is a little bit different than practicing to play games and practicing to play against great competition. And I think we’ve been trying to get the players to transition into that.
"So, you want to have short-term goals, but you want to have long-term goals, too, aight in terms of these games are going to be coming up, let’s make sure we’re ready to play.”
