Practice Report: Alabama Shifts Focus to Texas A&M
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — After its 38-19 victory on the road over Missouri, Alabama football returned home and now sets its sights on its home opener against Texas A&M.
Earlier in the day on Monday, Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban listed the potential threats that the Aggies present to Alabama heading into its second game of the season.
"Texas A&M is a very good team," Saban said. "Jimbo [Fisher] has done a really good job there. They've got like 16 starters back from last year's team, seven or eight on each side of the ball. Got a really good running back. Quarterback's got a lot of experience. Very good player. Offensive line has four-out-of-five starters back. Spiller's a good running back. They've got really good players. They've got seven or eight starters back on defense, and their defense was ranked last year. Played very well last week against Vanderbilt in only giving up 12 points."
While the Aggies' offense struggled to find its groove against the Commodores this past weekend, the Aggies' defense proved to be much more stalwart. Texas A&M held Vanderbilt to just 255 total yards and 12 points on the day, which if you don't count a second-quarter safety executed by Vanderbilt's defense then means only 10 points.
Bottom line, Saban is well aware of how much more difficult of a challenge Texas A&M presents to Alabama than Missouri did in Week 1.
"This is going to be a much more challenging game for us. It's a good all-around team. They play well on special teams, they've got good specialists. So it's going to be necessary for us to make a significant amount of improvement and play for 60 minutes in this game because of the type of team we're playing against."
