Everything Lane Kiffin Said After No. 12 Ole Miss at No. 1 Alabama
Coming in, Nick Saban was 23-0 against his former assistant coaches, with Lane Kiffin among the few who at least kept it close with last year's 63-48 shootout.
He improved to 24-0, including 3-0 against Kiffin all-time, including a win over Tennessee in 2009.
Here's some of what Kiffin had to say after Saturday's game:
“Credit to Alabama first off, their players, coaching staff. They’re the No. 1 team in the country, and we were coming in here playing in front of 100,000. We said all week, we have to do everything right to give yourself a chance, and obviously we didn’t do that. We had chances to get off the field. Had Bryce [Young] sacked a couple of times and let him out. Not making fourth downs and not finishing that first drive, but then multiple drives on fourth down.
"I’m sure we got killed on going for it on fourth down, but that’s analytics. We believe in our players, and it doesn’t work all the time. When it works or it doesn’t work and you follow the book, it doesn’t look good.
"But also, that’s why it’s analytics, not just doing whatever you want to do because you can easily get a punt blocked … you can give up a punt return for net of nothing and be exactly the same. Disappointing, but it’s one game. That never defines a season. They’re a great team, and we struggled with them on offense obviously, especially up front. I mean, I guess 31 [Will Anderson Jr.] has got another year, but he should go be the first pick in the draft.”
On the offensive line ...
They played a lot of odd-type, four eyes, that's a hard up-front when you do that. I tell it how it is, good and bad. We got dominated up front. That ain't hard to see. I'm sure you saw that watching. Matt [Corral] didn't have very much time. We had negative runs with guys in the backfield. So again, it's not us doing a very good job, but it's also a credit to a really good defense led by No. 31. They made plays.
I thought it toward the end of the game. Coach Saban said a year ago, he felt like a year ago, he felt like afterwards that every call was the right call that we had, everything went our way. It was like that for them defensively. We go speed-option on fourth down and No. 10 [Henry To'oTo'o] makes a great play, catches [Jerrion Ealy] and [Ealy] tries to cut back for some reason. So credit them for showing up and making all the plays.
What made Brian Robinson Jr. and the running game so effective today?
Brian's a good player, I remember him playing right here in Tuscaloosa when I was there. They ran him a lot to their left side. That left tackle [Evan Neal] may be the first pick of the draft since No. 31 can't come out, because he's huge and they ran behind him a lot. The guy's a dominant player. Brian did a nice job and was still in there at the end ... we actually finally stopped him in the fourth quarter twice.
How close are you from having your offensive and defensive lines from having you being competitive in games like this?
Well I think that's always an issue with Alabama. They sign the best players everywhere in the country, but they always sign the best in the front. So you're always going to have to do unique things, no different from when Ole Miss did beat Alabama. They had [Robert] Nkemdiche and moved him up front. He made a lot of plays. It's always going to be an uphill battle that way. It's just how it is. You have to scheme around them.
Was going for fourth down in your own territory calls that were specific to playing Alabama?
No, that's actually opposite. Anything 100 percent you go for it, and that's the other way. A lot of people don't do it because it's like scared money. When you're at the blackjack table with $5 it's easy. Put a couple of thousand out there and you get scared. I said we weren't going to do that, we were going to follow the analytics, follow the book and not get scared because we're in Alabama, you know not have confidence in our players and punt. You can punt and they're still going to score. They scored on every possession but one during the first half. I know it looks bad when it doesn't work, but again, you can put it away and it just takes longer for them to score.
Are there adjustments that can be made to keep just five or six in the box and still stop the run?
Yeah. It's probably going to sound crazy, but if you were there a year ago they moved the ball better a year ago, a lot faster than this year. It just took them longer this year. We actually made them work to get the rushing yards even though it ended up being a lot. Brian's ability to carry, that could have easily been a lot higher. I don't think it's a game in which you say suddenly, 'Ok, we need to change what we're doing' on defense. That's not really the storyline of the game. The storyline of the game was they did a great job on defense. Great players, they made great adjustments with coach, and, you know, we didn't.
Overall takeaways of Matt Corral's performance:
I think it's going to sound strange, I think Matt played all right. He threw no interceptions, whatever he was on completions, 22 of 30. We didn't do a whole lot around him and we didn't protect him. That's hard. He didn't have a lot of time to throw. He actually moved around, got out of trouble and made some plays or it would have been worse. I thought Matt still played well.
What's the key to moving forward after a game like this?
Make sure they understand that it's just one game. There was a lot of hype building up before the game, and one game does not define your season. It doesn't define you and hold you. You can go one way or another. And I think in a way, as much as it hurts during it, it kind of sometimes better with a game like this versus last year where you're sitting there going 'Oh, one play,' and then you have a hangover and we go play like we did against Arkansas. Hopefully this re-focusses us and shows us how we have to do everything right.
Are the 78 rushing yards more about the score, the pace of the game, what Alabama was doing or what?
Combination, especially as you saw the the game was in the first half. There wasn't a lot of holes for us to run. We had to try and be creative and come up with different things to try and come up with some more space and stuff. But if you don't get the first downs and get them tired, I've always said -- I've seen the Alabama defense for a long time -- they can be a great defense and shut anybody down if you don't get them tired. We didn't do that today. I thought we were started to with the first drive, and then we sputtered after that.
Do you have an update on Jonathan Mingo?
I don't. That was a late-in-the-week thing. You feel down for the kid. He was in tears wanting to play in this game. He's worked as hard as anybody. I feel bad for Matt losing him, finding out Thursday that he wasn't going to play, so we'll see.
How much of factor was playing at Bryant-Denny Stadium?
I mean I'm sure it was. Once you put the headset on you don't hear that as coaches. But that's why they call it home-field advantage. With 100,000 people I'm sure it affected the players somewhat. I didn't feel like we had a lot of crowd-noise issues, or have a lot of false starts going on. But I'm sure there was an impact.
How did not having Mingo impact the game-plan or the outcome?
Well, when you lose a significant player like him during the week it's difficult because your game-plan is already in when we found out he wasn't going to play. It is what it is. I kind of felt bad for Matt when it happened, he wasn't coming in with a full strength of weapons going into this matchup. but you know we have to get better and whomever plays, plays.
This story will be updated with video ...
