Everything Alabama Coach Nick Saban Said After 49-26 Win At Arkansas

The Crimson Tide racked up over 300 yards and five touchdowns on the ground in the Southeastern Conference road victory.

Christopher Walsh | Oct 1, 2022

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Alabama Crimson Tide

The No. 2 Alabama Crimson Tide football team piled up 317 rushing yards and tallied five rushing touchdowns on its way to a 49-26 win at No. 19/20 Arkansas on Saturday at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium.

Running back Jahmyr Gibbs led the Crimson Tide on the ground, compiling a career-high 206 rushing yards and a pair of touchdown runs. Both of his scores came in the fourth quarter when he scored from 72 yards and 76 yards to put the game out of reach.

The Crimson Tide (5-0, 2-0 SEC) played a majority of the contest without starting quarterback Byrce Young who suffered a shoulder injury midway through the second quarter and did not return. He finished with 173 yards through the air on 7-of-13 passing and accounted for a pair of scores (one each passing and rushing).

Redshirt freshman Jalen Milroe stepped in for Young and had a strong performance combining for 156 yards of offense both through the air (65 yards and a touchdown on 4-of-9 passing) and with his feet (six rushes for 91 yards and a touchdown) along with a passing touchdown.

Wide receiver Kobe Prentice led the game in receiving, with 82 yards on four receptions, including one that went for a score.

Linebacker Henry To'oTo'o led the Tide defense with 10 total tackles, while defensive back Kool-Aid McKinstry tallied six solo stops. Linebacker Jaylen Moody and defensive lineman Jaheim Oatis both tallied sacks in the game. Defensive back DeMarcco Hellams forced a fumble and went on to recover it to complete the turnover.

Here's what Nick Saban had to say afterward:

“A really good win for our team. I thought one of the messages that we tried to give the team was you have to maintain your intensity in the game for 60 minutes in the game, regardless of what the score is and regardless of what happens in the game. And even though it was a great win and we did a lot of good things out there, made a lot of big plays, I don’t think we did that. We didn’t maintain our intensity.

“We let them get back in the game at one point. A couple errors in the kicking game, as well as we lost our intensity on the scoring drive right before the half on defense and let them gain momentum in the game, and then really struggled in the third quarter on offense and defense. But did a really good job in the fourth quarter, finishing the game, scoring 21 points and making some big plays.

"It’s hard to win on the road. There’s a lot of things we can learn from this game. Really proud of the way our players competed in the game. We had too many penalties. So there’s a lot to learn, but it’s also an SEC road game against a good team, and I was proud of the way our guys competed.

"I thought we came out and played great in the beginning of the game, and we got ahead 28-0. I thought our players competed, played well, played on defense, played well on offense, got off the field on third down. That’s one of the things that we didn’t do when they started coming back a little bit is we had a couple third-down opportunities where we didn’t get off the field and they kept possession of the ball and that led to scores.

“But the kicking game errors, the onside kick, the bad snap on the punt ... I mean, the kicking game helped us when we had a couple big-time punt returns, but it actually hurt us later in the game. But those were really our errors, our errors. So they’re all fixable and they’re things we’re looking forward to getting better at.”

On Bryce Young:

“Bryce has a little AC sprain in his shoulder. We’ll have to take it day-to-day. I think he’s OK. He doesn’t have a serious injury. We didn’t think he could go back in the game today because I didn’t think he had much steam on throwing the ball. He’s had these before, and in a few days he starts to respond pretty well, so we’ll just have to see how it goes and play it day-to-day.”

On the long runs in the fourth quarter:

“Really good blocking. I mean, did a really good job up front. One of them, Jalen [Milroe] scrambled on third down, a critical third down, for a big play. But the couple long ones that Jahmyr [Gibbs] made were really well-blocked. He does a great job of pressing the hole, gets the defense to commit, gets the linebackers to commit and makes a quick cut, has a quick burst, gets through the hole. He’s really, really good at that.”

Does the offensive game plan change at all with a different quarterback?

“I don’t know, I was gonna call Jimbo [Fisher] afterwards and tell him exactly what we would do. If he can hear it in the press conference then I don’t have to call him. There are things that Jalen does well. We practice some of those things and if he has to play we’ll practice them more. But I thought he did a good job of managing the game today and gave our team a chance to win.

"We scored how many points with him playing quarterback? We had 14 when Bryce was in there and the rest was when he was in there. So it wasn’t all bad.”

On the Crimson Tide defense, what did you tell them?

“Maintain their intensity. You can’t play defense if you don’t have great intensity. You can’t tackle if you don’t have great intensity. You can’t knock the guy back if you don’t have intensity. You can’t cover a guy if you don’t have great mental intensity. So when you lose that, you get soft and 3-yard runs become 8-yard runs, so it’s second and 2 instead of second and 8. You don’t get off the field on third down when you have an opportunity because you don’t cover as well.

"So we lost contain a couple times. Just maintain your intensity, stay focused on what you have to do to do your job and you’ve gotta do it with physical toughness and being aggressive and having an aggressive mindset in terms of how you play. And then we had four penalties on defense in the fourth quarter, one on third-and-forever, after the play. Dead ball, gave them a first down. I mean, that’s not playing smart. And everybody has the opportunity to make good choices and decisions and to play smart, and we need to do a better job of that. And as a coach, that’s our responsibility to get players to do that.”

On how big was Jalen Milroe’s long run?

“It stopped the bleeding for sure because that was third-and-long in bad field position, and if we don’t make a first down there they’re gonna get the ball back and they’re down by five and have all the momentum in the game. So that was a huge momentum swing in the game, in my opinion. After that, we played better. After that, I didn’t think they played as well.”

On the impact on the offense without Bryce Young:

“You know, Bryce is a great player. There’s only one Bryce Young in this country, and he’s a great player. Jalen can do what Jalen does well, and we have confidence in him. We have confidence in the development of Ty Simpson as his backup. But hopefully Bryce will be OK. But I thought the offense did a really good job of continuing to score points in a different way than when Bryce plays. And I think you’ve gotta have that kind of diversity on your team. You’ve gotta be able to win more than one way.”

On what Young was able to do on his third-down touchdown passes:

“Bryce does a good job of reading the coverage. We didn’t know how they would play us going into this game. They’ve been playing four-down quite a bit with seven guys in coverage. They started out the game playing three down, six DBs right off the bat, which is how they kind of played us last year. So it was a little tougher for him because it was a lot of eight drops and they have a really good blitz package. But he did a great job of handling the protection.

“You guys just see him throw the ball. He got us in the right protection every time so we could block their blitzes, which was critical. Now, there were a couple times in man-to-man we didn’t shake them very well, just like on the play he got injured on. They were playing man-to-man, we didn’t have anybody really to throw the ball to. He should have thrown the ball away. We were in field-goal range and not taken the chance of getting hit. But he really kind of fell on his shoulder, so that was the issue. But he does a really good job of reading coverages, [is] accurate with the ball. If we get people open, he’ll get it to the right guy.”

On the importance of the center position:

“We think Darrian [Dalcourt] is a really good player, but we’ve got a lot of confidence in Seth [McLaughlin]. He had to play down the stretch last year in some big games, got three or four starts in the playoffs, in the SEC Championship Game. So we have a lot of confidence in him. But look, we wanna get all of our players healthy. Depth on your team is important.

"I mean, Brian Branch goes down in the game, Malachi [Moore] gets cramps and we didn’t have a third star. So Kool-Aid [McKinstry] had to go play star, and he ain’t practiced one play at star. I tell [Jordan] Battle and [DeMarcco] Hellams, ‘Tell him what to do every play." He’s a smart guy, so he knows the coverages, but he’s never played that position. But he did a good job when he went in there on the series that he was in there before we got the other guy back in there. So depth on your team is really important, so having all these guys healthy is important to us in the future.”

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