Nick Saban: 'We have to play smarter'

Alabama coach happy with 47-28 win at Texas A&M, but not with lack of discipline

COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — One of the more telling lines from Nick Saban's press conference after Alabama defeated Texas A&M 47-28 on Saturday had nothing to do with the Aggies never really being able to stop the Crimson Tide offense. 

It had to do with discipline, like the two penalties that led to a field goal, and junior wide receiver DeVonta Smith  getting ejected for throwing a punch. 

"We have to play smarter," he said. 

Here's some of what he also said before departing Kyle Field:

“Well this is obviously a great win for us, this is a tough place to play against a good team. Certainly proud of the way our guys competed in the game and you know you say you always go to play the next play. We certainly shot ourselves in the foot three times in a row in the red zone, where we threw an interception and kicked two field goals and in a critical time in the game where we really could have broken the game open early on. 

"Defensively we played decent at times, but at times we gave them plays we shouldn’t have. But the quarterback scrambled around too much in the game and didn’t really finish the game with class in terms of being able to take the air out of it.

"Too many penalties you know, 11 penalties on the day. 

"I think special teams was huge in this game we had over 300 yards in returns and you know the way I do math on that is if you score touchdowns or not every 100 yards you have in field position is worth six points so that was huge in terms of field position and huge in our ability to turn the field around and probably score points, but I felt like we did a lot of good things today and obviously we have things we need to work on. We don’t really have anybody significantly injured. 

"Will Reichard will be day to day as we go through and see how he feels next week. Chris Owens will start practicing a little bit more but we will just have to see how those guys go right now but I’m really proud of the way our team competed in the game they took the ball right down and scored the first drive of the game. 

"The players didn’t real the players didn’t’ get frustrated they made the adjustments we needed to make, played better right through the rest of the half. A lot of good things in the game, tough place to play, great win for us especially in our division.”

On the end of game penalties…

“We also got another penalty for pushing the pile at the end of the game which we were trying to take the air out of the ball so the other team can’t get the ball back and you can’t get penalties. Just didn’t finish the game like we need to finish the game. You don’t want to give good teams the ball back.”

On how the defense affected the quarterback…

“We were better today until the end. I think we got a little bit tired, got out of our rush game a little bit, this guy’s a good athlete, took off running a couple times for a couple big plays. We have to do a better job on that. Our plan was to make this guy throw the ball from the pocket and that’s what we wanted him to do. We did not want him to do what he did last year.”