Nick Saban Reacts to Alabama Penalties in Narrow Win Over Texas

An undisciplined afternoon from the Crimson Tide nearly led to a shocker in Austin.

Top-ranked Alabama narrowly outlasted Texas in Austin on Saturday, claiming a 20–19 victory and staving off an upset bid thanks to a heroic final drive by Bryce Young.

The Week 2 game was tightly contested throughout as Crimson Tide struggled to move the ball for much of the afternoon against a reinvigorated Longhorns defense and Texas’s offense grew stagnant following an apparent arm injury to starting quarterback Quinn Ewers in the first quarter. However, a major reason that the outcome hung in the balance for so long was the uncharacteristic number of penalties committed by Nick Saban’s program. 

The Tide ended the game with 15 penalties, all of which took place in the first three quarters, resulting in 100 total penalty yards. According to ESPN Stats & Info, that’s the most penalties committed and accepted by an Alabama team in the Saban era.

On the other hand, Texas notched just five penalties for thirty yards in the loss.

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After the Tide narrowly pulled out the win, Saban expressed his dismay with his team’s lack of discipline, saying that the program needs to clean up its play moving forward.

“We don’t want penalties. It’s all about discipline. Making the right choices and decisions whether it’s pre-snap or post-snap, it doesn’t matter,” the Alabama coach told Fox’s Jenny Taft in a postgame interview on the broadcast. “We got to play better, there’s doubt about that.

“You gotta give Texas a lot of credit. Sark’s done a great job here, they’ve got a good team. We just got to play better.”

Nick Saban: “We made a lot of mental errors. Shooting ourselves in the foot.” pic.twitter.com/9wMrdV2Kzg

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) September 10, 2022

Although the penalties proved to be a major setback for the Crimson Tide, Alabama still led with less than five minutes to go in the fourth quarter. That was until a strong drive by Texas backup quarterback Hudson Card put the Longhorns in field goal range, giving kicker Bert Auburn a chance to knock through a 49-yard field goal with 1:29 time remaining. 

That proved to be too much time for Young, who led the Crimson Tide 61 yards back down the field as the clock wound down. Will Reichard drilled a 33-yard field goal to put Alabama back on top with 10 seconds remaining and improve the program to 2–0 on the year.

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