Nick Saban ‘Anxious’ About Alabama Playing Off Bye Week at LSU

The legendary Crimson Tide coach says that a bye week isn’t always a good thing for a team.

As is often the case, Alabama will play SEC West rival LSU this weekend coming off of the team’s bye week. While conventional wisdom says that this is a huge advantage for Nick Saban’s team, the legendary Crimson Tide coach says that isn’t necessarily the case.

“People always assume that a bye week is a good thing, but you never know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing until you kinda go through it, see what you get done, see how you improve, see how your players respond to what they need to do to be able to improve and then how do they play in that next game,” Saban said during Thursday night’s Hey Coach! radio show. “That’s what we’re anxious to see this weekend.”

Saban, who was asked by a caller about downsides to the bye week, said that teams can occasionally struggle to “maintain intensity” with the week off, like they may during the course of a game.

“You have momentum in a game, sometimes you have momentum in your business, sometimes you’re doing really, really well and things are rolling along and everything’s going well,” Saban said. “So the ability to maintain intensity is probably one of the most important things in a game but also in a season.”

Saban said that when a team is really rolling, a bye week can halt that momentum, but that there are clear upsides for a team that’s banged up midway through the season.

Alabama is 7–1 at this point in the 2022 campaign. Saban’s club followed up an upset loss to rival Tennessee with a blowout win over Mississippi State before last weekend’s bye. 

Alabama enters the game ranked No. 6 in the initial College Football Playoff poll. The Tide will face No. 10 LSU at 7 p.m. ET on Saturday night. ESPN will broadcast the game.

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