Everything Nick Saban Said During his Teleconference with Reporters

Alabama coach Nick Saban touches on what the Crimson Tide has been doing without spring football

Alabama Athletics

A lot of uncertainty in the world right now and a lot to deal with. A lot of new realities at work and at home. Our primary responsibility is the health and well-being and safety of our team, our staff and our families. We're taking the necessary steps to protect all those folks the best we can. And hopefully our fans are going to be safe as well.

These are very challenging times. We've never had to deal with anything like this before, at least in my lifetime. There's a global effort to slow the spread of this virus, and all of us have to be responsible in the decisions that we make based on what our responsibility is to do just that.

We're trying to stay engaged in every way that we can with our team. The technology that we have now with Zooming and things like that, video conferences with the staff and players can help us monitor their well-being, No. 1 and their health and safety. No. 2, their schoolwork and the academic portion of it, which is being done on line. As well as we're allowed to have two hours a week of some kind of football-related type stuff. We're doing small increments of teaching segments with our players.

Any other things that we had going on, like we had a leadership seminar going. We're continuing to do that on line. We're trying to provide as much support — whether it's academic, medical care, mental health, wellness, nutrition _ whatever our players' and staff's needs are.

I never really answer hypothetical questions. I'm sure that everybody's going to want me to speculate on what's going to happen in the future, and nobody really knows. It's very uncertain. It's uncertain times. I think we have to fight through the process of what we need to do on a day to day basis to make good choices and decisions, to the right thing at the right time regardless of the circumstance.

And think about what's ahead of us, what the future is, what we want to happen. Try to do the things correctly today so we have the best chance to get the outcome that we want in the future. I think that's everybody's responsibility. I know we've got a lot of good people out there, health care folks, that I'd like to thank. And people who are still having to work and do things that they're providing a lot of safety and health care for a lot of people and we certainly appreciate that.

Q: Is there an update on the status of linebacker Markail Benton?

Markail Benton was suspended from the team. That was three weeks earlier and that hasn't really changed.

Q: What's a normal day for you now? How are you dealing with what's going on?

I think the whole world's turned upside down so it's a little bit different for everybody. But I think the best thing we can do is adapt and adjust to it the best that we can. Basically, there's two areas, really three areas, that we're trying to focus on. Eveyr morning, I have a zoom staff meeting at 7:30 just like we always do. It's done on Zoom so there's no personal contact with anybody.

And we discuss basically what we're going to do with our team and our players that particular day. We usually use the morning to sort of work on next year's opponents, which is [not] what we would typically be doing at this time of year when spring practice is going on.

In the afternoon, we try to do as much as we can to stay in contact with recruits. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday right now we're doing segments with our players. I do video conferences and phone calls with recruits then in the afternoon. That's pretty much what a day is like and we're doing the best we can.

Q: Two-hour video sessions and benefit to not having staff turnover this year?

We’re not in any real hurry with whatever installations we’re doing with the players. I think basically there’s three parts to teaching: what to do, how to do it and why it’s important to do it that way. If we just take a single concept. Like, for example, if we’re on offense and we’re teaching inside zone. We can take 30 minutes on teaching the techniques, the aiming points, the footwork, and then actually show the players video of doing it correctly or actually let them evaluate if the guy we’re looking at is doing it correctly or incorrectly. I think conceptually there’s a lot of benefit to it because we don’t have to hurry through it because [typically] we’re going through this install and then we’re gonna go practice in a half-hour so we got 30 minutes to meet. Then we’re gotta go on the field and then we gotta be able to go do this today. I think it gives the opportunity for the players to be engaged, No. 1, but No. 2, I do think it’s a slow process of learning that can be beneficial to them having a better understanding of concepts. 

We’re not in any hurry. We’re kind of taking it slow and so far it’s worked out really, really well. I think, look, we have good continuity with our staff which is a positive but on the other hand we’ve always been able to improvise and do things that we need to do. I actually think the addition of the strength and conditioning coaches that we have now has been a huge positive for us because we’re building a new sports science center. These guys, Dr. Rhea has actually got a PhD. His knowledge and experience in a lot of technical type testing and stuff that you can do with players and the new training programs we’re doing, the players have really liked. Hopefully this will help us with some injury prevention and help us be able to perform better when the time comes. They were very instrumental in setting up this whole program of what we’re doing with the players in terms of Apple watches for their workouts, apps on their phones for weight training programs. We had an issue with some players not having a place to work out because high schools are closed. We put them on band workout programs. They’ve done a really, really good job of managing this to this point and the players have done a really good job responding to it.

Q: How long would you need to practice before being ready to play?

Well I really can’t say that. Obviously we have 14 practices in the spring, not counting A-Day, which makes 15, which is not gonna happen. If there was some kind of way we could have 14 days of teaching with our players sometime before fall camp happens, I think that probably would be beneficial. Historically we’re not allowed to work with our players in the summertime. This would be hypothetical that at some point in time in the summer we would have the players back here and we would be able to work with them. I’m not talking about having pads on or anything, but just be able to teach system, teach scheme. We’ll have to evaluate the players based on fall camp. I think the players who benefit the most from spring practice and having these [meetings] are really the young players on the team. Hopefully this will work out that we’ll able to have some time to teach them and we’ll just have to evaluate them in fall camp.

Q: When get kids back on campus, whenever, what are the biggest challenges when you have a long break getting physically ready to play when haven’t had contact?

I don’t really … I may be a little different on this, but I don’t think that any of the actual contact you have in the spring … I mean I think the technique and the things you teach, whether it’s tackling, block protection, footwork, hand placement for offensive linemen, pass protection blocking for running backs, whatever it might be…perimeter blocking for receivers, block protection for DBs. I think the how to do it, the why it’s important to do it that way probably has a lot of carryover. That’s why we do it.

I don’t think the actual contact you have in the spring prepares somebody to have contact in the fall. That’s why you have fall camp.

That’s why I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to do some sort of teaching sessions on the field even if it’s in shorts and tee shirts in summertime with our players. At least from a knowledge and experience standpoint we’ll be able to benefit their growth and development so they’ll be more ready when contact actually comes in fall camp.

I don’t personally think making fall camp longer is going to get anybody any more ready to play.

If you look at statistics historically on concussions, injuries…the most concentrated time that you practice and not play is in fall camp. You have more practices, you have to spend more time on the field. So I don’t know that increasing that is going to be beneficial in getting people ready to play. I think if you could do simulated training programs in the summertime that wouldn’t involve that much contact, or even any contact, that would be just as beneficial at that point.

Q: You came up at a time when summer work wasn’t even done. Do you think there might be in the future a cutback from the whole year-round of college football?

I don’t think it’s totally correct. Even when I played which was many, many moons ago … We had spring practice, we did off-season programs, we did everything the players do now. The difference was in the summertime everybody didn’t go to summer school. I played for Don James. We were given post cards of a workout that we were given for every week in the summer that we were supposed to do at home. That involved weight training, conditioning, and some kind of simulated training relative to your position. And you had to fill that out and send it in every week.

And then when we came back, the first thing we did was we had a physical training test. Anybody that played in the old days knows we used to have the mile run, the two-mile runs, sixteen 110s, we did the Springfield test which was running ten 40s with 15 seconds rests in between and your conditioning level was measured by how your time decreased as you got tired.

We’ve always had the same year-round approach. The only difference is when we were able to put guys on scholarship in the summertime and we had all the players here for the summertime, the organization of the summer workouts was done internally here by the strength and conditioning staff. You didn’t do it at home at your high school field or wherever.

So I don’t think the workload has changed. I think the format has changed a little bit. And I do think players being able to go to summer school has enhanced to a large degree graduation rates, how quickly guys can graduate, how they can get ahead academically. I think that’s been a huge positive.

And they are able to do supervised workouts by the strength and conditioning staff in the summertime now rather than me running on the railroad tracks back in West Virginia.

How’s Tua Tagovailoa doing in his rehab and getting ready for the NFL draft?

I’m not a doctor, and I can’t comment on where Tua is and what he’s doing, but we’ve tried to continue to do everything we can from a rehab standpoint. I think his agents and his representation now are kind of determining what the factors are. I think anybody that’s going to have a medical recheck after the combine, which usually happens about the first week of April before the draft, should probably go to their physician and do a medical check. I certainly recommended that to our players that have rechecks coming up and send it to all of the teams. That’s about all you can do right now. I can’t really comment on where Tua is. We think his rehab has gone extremely well, we think he’s able to do things on a schedule relative to the way we all thought he would be able to do them and he’s very positive and upbeat with where he is right now. That’s really about all there is for me to say about that.

You've been through the tornado and other difficult situations. What’s your role in the community in this time of crisis?

I’ve done several public service announcements and I’m going to do a couple more today. We made a pretty significant contribution to food banks in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham and Montgomery, as well as the 211 program, where people have the opportunity — it’s like 911, but if you have issues with food or whatever, you can call these numbers and seek help. We made a significant contribution to all those things and we’ll continue to help wherever we can. I’m just trying to encourage people to do what they need to do and be responsible in terms of social distancing, staying at home whenever possible, if you do have a job that you need to go to, practice health and safety. Certainly have great appreciation for those on the front line in the health care system trying to fight this disease off. We made pretty significant contributions to try to help people in the community.

How has the daily routine changed?

I think everybody’s changed. First of all, if nothing changed, we’d all be here having spring practice today and I wouldn’t be the only one here having this press conference because nobody’s allowed in the building. We’re doing a lot of things different, I think I explained how we’re doing all those things differently earlier when I gave you the day-to-day update.I’m sure things are very different for just about everyone out there in terms of what you can do, how you can do it, if you have to work from home. This is a very uncertain time for a lot of people, creates a lot of anxiety. But, what we’ve tried to emphasis to people is not to worry, but to try to make good choices and decisions about what you do so you can try to stay safe. Just hope and pray that we can move out the other end of this sometime in the very near future.

Do you lean more on veterans during a time like this?

I can’t say that. We’re going to lean on the people who are the most responsible to go out and do their job and be able to create value for themselves because they’re confident and understand. That could be a freshman. We’ve played a lot of freshman around here, I think we played 19 last year and five started. I know they’re not going to have the benefit of going through spring practice, but we’ve had a lot of guys that came in the fall — Minkah, Ronnie Harrison — we’ve had guys that weren’t here in the spring, they didn’t get here mid-year and they started as freshmen. I don’t think making those kinds of choices, decisions, whatever you want, without having legitimate information to evaluate from, that kind of speculation, we’re not going to do it and I don’t think it’s smart for anyone to do.