Hey Coach and the Nick Saban Show: Kentucky Week

The Alabama head coach joins Eli Gold and the Crimson Tide Sports Network to talk about the football program as they get set for a showdown with the Kentucky Wildcats.

The Crimson Tide Sports Network hosts its weekly "Hey Coach Show" on Thursday nights during the fall. The program is hosted live at Baumhower's Victory Grille next to the University of Alabama campus.

This week's edition is the thirteenth of the fall semester and Alabama football head coach Nick Saban was in attendance to talk about the LSU win and preview the upcoming matchup against the Kentucky Wildcats.

Eli Gold will be joined by Nick Saban as always, but the early part of the episode featured women's tennis coach Jonatan Berhane, and the media guest is Nick Kelly of the TuscaloosaNews.

Segment One with Nick Kelly and Eli Gold

Eli Gold asks Nick Kelly when he's getting married and he said next April and both Kelly and Gold compliment each other's significant others. 

Segment Two with Nick Kelly, Eli Gold and Nick Saban

• Gold says happy birthday to producer Tom Stipe
• They all say hello to Coach Saban and Gold asks how practice is going?
• Saban, "It's challenging in a lot of ways, when you have two emotional games back-to-back that kind of sets up a mental trap for you where it's pretty much human nature and it's pretty much pervasive that when you have things like that happen that people have a little physiological let down. It's almost like watching a scary movie and you're all excited, and you're all excited and in the end the bad guy gets killed and everybody's kind of relieved. Well, you have big games, and it's the same way. It's kind of physiological in nature. Everybody's got to ask themselves how important is the season? How important is this game? How important is the opportunity that you've created for yourself? Are you willing to choose to do the things you need to do to take advantage of that? And you should have great gratitude for that. I mean, this team has worked really, really hard. They've made a tremendous amount of improvement and it would be a real shame for them if they don't finish the way they're capable of finishing. So that's what we're trying to get everybody to buy into and it started a little slow in the beginning of the week, but they've picked it up as the week's gone on."
• Kelly, "You've talked about complacency a lot, when's a time in your life where you learned best to combat complacency?"
• Saban. "Whenever the next game came up and you got beat, I mean, it was pretty simple. Complacency's just not something that bodes very well in competitive sports. It just doesn't. Because, it doesn't matter if you're a more physical team, a more disciplined team or even if you're a better team than the team you're playing. What matters is, are you that when you play the game? So you've got to be better when you play the game and that takes a certain psychological disposition in terms of your preparation, your attention to detail, the discipline and all the things you do to put yourself in a position to play that way. So it doesn't work very well in competitive sports. I think there's a difference between having passion for something and being obsessive with it. So if you just have passion and you just enjoy playing, maybe when hard comes, it's not worth it. When you're obsessed with something and you want to be the best you can be and you're obsessed having an opportunity to win a championship or win the West or whatever, then your feelings don't go up and down because you're obsessed with it and it means everything to you to be the best that you can be at what you try to do. I guess I've kind of been that way through the years. It might probably not be the best thing for my health sometimes but I still enjoy it."
• PeeWee on the phone, "---"
• Saban, "I've got a question for you. Since you were here at the last game I just wanted to know what you said to get the line to play that way?"
• PeeWee, "The same message that you preach coach. 'How bad do you want it? How bad are you willing to work for it?"
• Saban, "Now you get to ask a question, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have interrupted you." 
• PeeWee, - Goes on to brag on the offensive stats - 
• Saban, "That's alright. You did a great job of doing that. I was very proud of them. I'm really excited about the way our offensive team has kind of developed and grown and improved throughout the course of the year. I think they're developing a lot of confidence. Some of the younger and more inexperienced guys are developing more and more confidence, which I think contributes to the consistency we're able to play with. But, there were two out of the eleven possessions, two other scoring opportunities where very uncharacteristically we didn't make field goals. That mean's we would have scored on eight-of the-eleven, That's even more compelling. I think more importantly of all the statistics that you laid out there was being 11-for-14 on third down. Because that is one of the goals you have for the game when you're playing a really good offensive team and a great quarterback like Jayden Daniels is, was to keep the ball away from him. I mean, to convert on all those third downs, to keep the ball. Is really a significant, I think, important factor in being able to win games like that because you don't want to give them the ball too many times. We took like seven minutes off the clock, when there was 11 minutes to go in the game all the way down to four. With four minute offense. We missed a field goal, but that is really huge when you're playing against really good offensive teams."
• Gold, "How do you handle it when Will Reichard misses a kick?"
• Saban, "Well, I think what I've learned through the years is most of these guys they really don't look to a coach, they kind of know. I mean Will Reichard really knows when he hits it well. He missed them both just right off - to the right. And his ball usually just hooks just a little a bit, just a little bit and neither one of them did and he just missed both of them by that much. The first one he hit really good, the second one not so good. He just tells you how it went, I just pat him on the butt and say don't worry about it, hit the next one. Because they technically know, exactly. I mean It's almost like a golfer, you kind of technically know when you're hitting it right or you're taking it too far inside, or not turning enough, you can fix yourself. I think when we start telling guys like Will Reichard how to do what he does it probably can mess him up more than it can help him."
• Kelly, "What's it like when your quarterback wants to run and is a physical runner?"
• Saban, "I think it's great that he has that kind of competitive spirit. I think you've got to be smart about taking care of yourself, though, and not taking unnecessary hits because we want the guy to stay healthy too."
• Harrison on the phone, "Opinion or pro's or con's about coordinators in the press box or the sidelines?"
• Saban, "Yeah, well I think that,  - I let every one of our coordinators decide where they want to be. I've talked about this before, so I won't bore everybody with the point, but if a guy feels more comfortable calling the game in the press box, then I allow them to be in the press box. When I was a coordinator I always felt more comfortable in the press box because you could lay out all your stuff. Here's what I'm going to call on third-down, here's what I'm going to call in the red zone, I mean, you can kind of check your notes and that helps you call and you can study in between series and make corrections and things and all that. But when I was the defensive coordinator for Belichick he said, 'you can't be in the press box, you have to be in the sidelines. You're the guy that installs everything, you have the best relationships with the players, you can make adjustments with them better, you're teaching them and going over with everything with them. So I had to be on the sidelines and I was really, really nervous about that. Not only was I on the sidelines, I'm signaling too. So I'm deciding what we were going to play, what personnel has to go in the game and I'm signaling too. So that's a lot tougher than calling a game in the press box. But I do agree with Bill Belichick, your coordinators probably are the guys that have the greatest impact on the players on the sidelines because they are the guys who are presenting all the time to them, sort of talking to them, motivating them as a group. So there's good and bad in both, so therefore I allow a guy to do it where he feels most comfortable. Bill O'Brien was in the press box. We've had other coordinators in the press box in the past but if a guy feels comfortable with it, I'd love for him to be on the sidelines, because they can have an impact. But if they can't call a game, and they can't make the decisions they have to make on the sidelines. You've got to do it without paper and pencil. If you ever think about it, think about doing something without paper and pencil, you've got to have everything in your head. You don't have time to look at a call sheet and say 'ok it's third down, they're coming out of the huddle, what are we going to play on defense?'. You've got to know what you're going to play in that situation and you've got to go. If you're in the press box you can look at the sheet and figure it out. Well, it takes a different kind of guy and a different kind of personality to be able to do that. It's kind of to each his own. A guy who has a great impact and is with the players a lot and goes through all the coverage stuff is TRob. So he's on the sidelines with them. He makes a lot of adjustments with the linebackers and the secondary. Freddie does it with the defensive line so we're good. Same thing on offense, we have coaches who've been here longer than the coordinators that have relationships with the players. It's been a good thing for us, it's worked well for us this year."

Segment Three with Nick Kelly, Eli Gold and Nick Saban

• Kelly, "I'm getting married in April, and marriage advice?"
• Saban, "Elizabeth? I'd say you're a pretty lucky guy, so let's start with that. Well, I've answered this question before, but I think that we all have a tendency to be a little self-absorbed in how we think of things. I think if you want to have a good relationship with your spouse, you've got to sort of think about things the way they think about things and be respectful of their feelings. I think you can make each other better. Terry has always made me better in terms of correcting me when I do things that I shouldn't do, or I don't speak properly when I'm talking on TV sometimes. All those things you hate to hear sometimes, but it all makes you better and I think you can make each other better but it takes a certain amount of respect and you've got to trust that the other person's always trying to help you and I think you've got to invest time into relationships, man, and you've got to think of the other person. So that's my advice to you. Goodluck."
• Restaurant visitor, "Is there a moment so far this that's stood out above the rest?"
• Saban, "No, the atmosphere and environment for the last two games in Bryant-Denny Stadium, for the Tennessee game and the LSU game was phenomenal. I just want to thank the fans. That energy, that energy, that enthusiasm, that passion that everybody has. It makes you happy that you make so many people happy, but I've said this before, what happened last Saturday has no effect on what's going to happen this Saturday. Everybody's got to stay focused on what do you want to accomplish in what do you want accomplish and what do you want to do? I asked the players tonight after practice 'How do you feel about this season?', 'How do you feel about the opportunity that you created for yourself?', 'How do you feel about winning out and trying to put all these people that want to speculate about who's going to get in the playoffs. Put them on the hotseat in terms about making the determination about, do we belong or don't we belong, but we have to take care of our business first. So every game is more important. Especially when you're having success and you're having an opportunity to accomplish something of significance in the end. You've got to embrace the opportunity. You've got to have gratitude, that you have the opportunity and you've created for yourself, but you also have to respect the fact that a lot of people and our players have really, really worked hard to get to this point and they've made a tremendous amount of progress, I'm really proud of them, but you want to be proud of the way they finish too, so we've got to build on that."
• Saban Mailbox Time, "how early do players wake up for a noon est game?"
• Saban, "Well, it's going to be 12'oclock there, so we're on eastern time. Actually, on eastern time, which would be 7:15 we have player wake up. At 8:00 we have pregame meal. At 9:25 we do our twenty-minute walkthrough in the hotel. It's not really a walkthrough, it's kind of a chair-drill, depending on how much room you have, on offense and defense. We get on the bus, we go to the game, we try to always go to the game about two hours before kickoff and you've got to be ready to go. I mean, we usually have church service thirty minutes before pregame meal, but we'll have church service on Friday night, instead of that early in the morning. So that's how it goes with the players when we have an early game, but when we play a night game we have breakfast and we take a walk together as a team and then we have meetings and then they have another couple hours before church and it's the same process leading up to the game from pregame meal on. These early games are something players have got to have the right mindset for. It's kind of like, we tell them when your feet hit the ground you've got to be ready to go. You've got to be ready to go, that's just the way it is. If it's important to you, it's not hard to do."
• Chris on Phone, "How are Jaylen Key and Deontae Lawson?"
• Saban, "Well, they haven't been able to practice much this week. Very questionable for this game. Hopefully we can get them back in the near future, so it's going to be an opportunity for some other guys to step up on our team in this particular game. It'll be really important because Kentucky is a pro-style offense. Lot's of motions, lots of formations, lots of condensed formations that change things for players, so we really tried to work hard to make all these looks available to these guys, but have to make sure we can execute and we've got to communicate well. That's the thing that young players don't understand the importance of, is how important it is to communicate so you can play together on defense and nobody's really out of sync with how they've got to fit. When we grade a film we just look at, we either got a + on the play and this is why or we got a - on the play because they gained 5-yards or more, and why. 58 got hooked, 32 wasn't in the right-gap, so the players can look at it and see 'if I just did what I was supposed to do we'd have a successful play on that'. If we're playing defenses where we don't have any answers, then we should throw them out because you're never going to have the confidence of your players because you can't tell them if they did it right they wouldn't have success on the play."
• Kelly, "What are you looking for when you're watching film?"
• Saban, "I think, I look at the game, I think everyone sort of looks at the game as a coach in what was your background. Starting out being a quarterback I always looked at what is the defense playing? What's the coverage? What is the front? Is it a 4-2 front? Is it a 4-3 front? Is it a three-down? Whatever they're playing, what are they playing around it based on the formations? Then being a secondary coach all these years you kind of look at it the same way, I'm always looking from the back-end forward. So I'm looking at the formation that they're in, when I look at film I have a book and sometimes it has 168 pages in it and it's all done by formation, and the film is done by formation. So I see what they're doing in every formation. It might be 168 different formations but I see what they're doing in every formation. Then you try to categorize, how are you going to play? You can't play 168 different adjustments on every play? So how are you going to categorize these things where the players have a chance to be able to technically implement what you want to do on each one of those and how you're going to adjust to the formations and the motions and the plays that they run and then teach the players how they fit on every play. So that's kind of how I go about it. The next thing is to watch everything situationally, whether it's red-area, third-down, short-yardage, goal-line, here's everything that they do in every one of these situations. Two-minute, two-point play, try to put the best things together for each one of those and get the players to understand what they might see. First of all it starts with the big picture then you narrow it down to 'what do they do on first and ten?', 'What do they do on first and ten and they passed, do they run on second down?', I mean you've got all these things that you're looking for to try to create an advantage in how you call the game too."
• Gold, "Who does all the film prep work for you?"
• Saban, "Let me give you the history Eli, there's no more film.-- When I was a G.A. I had to cut the film up. You had this little viewer, and you chopped it and you had to put it together, offense, defense, special teams, all the third-down plays. The way you used to do it, is I'd take a piece of film and I'd put a piece of tape on it and I had a garage can. I'd put it on the edge of the garage can. I would have all the different reels taped around the can, third-down, short-yardage, goal-line and all that. Once you get them all you put them all together. So now you got a third-down reel, a short-yardage reel, now all you have to do is push a button. Basically we probably have 50, 60, 70 different categories of things that come out of the computer and it's all about how you break down the film to start with. So what our guys have to do, and we have some really good analysts, that break down the field, then the computer sorts it. All those guys have to do is get right information. Yard-line, down and distance, all those different circumstances that you're going to categorize and they come out and they punch a button and you've got it."
• Bobby in Mobile on the phone and Nick Saban share a funny moment about Lake Burton and some natural waterfalls in the area.

Segment Four with Nick Kelly, Eli Gold and Nick Saban

• Gold, "Nick Kelly have you liked the job at the Tuscaloosa News?"
• Kelly, "Everything I've wanted and more. I've loved being here. There's no better place to cover and write about football than here so I've loved it."
• Restaurant goes, "How do you feel about the depth of the team? Can I have my picture made with Miss Terry?"
• Saban, "Ok, you made a good choice, actually. I think I've spoke about this before, but I think the depth of our team is younger than it's been in the past and I think the reason for that is, one of the ways the portal has affected our team is, we don't lose our best players, we lose our next best player. The guy that's been in the program for two or three years, he's really a good player, he's a good special teams player, he's a backup, but he goes someplace else and he starts for someplace else. Like, I've watched a few games on TV and I've seen four or five of our guys that are starting for other teams. Well, those guys would either be starting for us or they would be our backups. So we had ten guys leave our team last year. We brought five guys in, but it's harder for us to get guys to come because they only want to come if they're going to start. So we have our best players, we lose our next-best guys, so how do you fill that gap? The gaps gets filled with younger players and a lot of times freshmen, who it takes a while for them to develop. We've had a lot of guys on our team now that've had the opportunity to develop through the season so I would say our depth is better than it has been, but at some positions we don't have a lot of depth. So it's going to be a challenging opportunity for some of the younger players to be able to get an opportunity in the game, they're well prepared and they've practiced well, but how they adapt in the game is, you don't know until they get some experience. The healthier we can stay down his stretch the better we will be and some positions are more important than others. Lawson is the signal caller on defense so he makes all the front adjustments, makes all the calls on the front, so his experience, his knowledge is missed a lot. The two safeties make all the calls in the secondary, when you lose a starting safety who's played however many games we've played so far this year, that experience gets replaced by someone who maybe doesn't have the same experience. Sometimes when you lose players at certain positions it hurts more than other players. But we've been pretty fortunate this year. This is probably the game where we'll be a little more banged up than most."
• Kelly, "What do you like about Terrion Arnold?"
• Saban, "Well, Terrion has a great personality, he's really well liked by the players. He enjoys playing the game. He has a lot of fun playing. He's a fun loving guy. He's enjoyable to be around. Sometimes those guys are the kind of guys you've really got to stay on them a bit to stay focused. That's the one thing we've really tried to work with him for the last couple years to be able to stay focused. Focused on what he needs to do and apply the techniques that he uses and all those kinds of things and when he does that he's a really good player."
• Anne on the Phone, "Dallas Turner's hit was controversial, but Jalen Milroe also got hit in the head and it wasn't called..."
• Saban, "Well, Miss Anne, first of all we're going to do everything we can, and I think it's good for college football and it's good for professional football as well to protect the quarterbacks. I think anything you hit a quarterback in the head area they're going to call a foul, I mean even if you just put your hands up to block a pass and come down and hit him in the head. You know Dallas Turner hit the guy right under the chin and not really a defenseless player, he was throwing the ball, he did hit him in the head and he should have been penalized for it, which he was. But it wasn't targeting, So that doesn't, that doesn't qualify for what targeting really is. Now, I hate it, I think Jayden Daniels is a a great player. A lot of people would love to see the guy play, he's exciting to watch and fantastic and nobody wants to see anybody get hurt. So we're not happy the guy got hurt on the play by any stretch of the imagination but Dallas Turner's just competing and playing hard and if he hits him three-inches lower it's a clean hit. He didn't hit him late, it's the fact that he hit him in the head, it wasn't a direct blow, it was under the chin."

Segment Five with Nick Kelly, Eli Gold and Nick Saban

• Kelly, "Kentucky's run defense, What's the key of keeping the Tide rushing offense going?"
• Sanban, "Well I think first of all they've got three, really big guys that are physical upfront. Most of the time they play a 3-4 front. They play big-people most of the time, in a day-and-age where most people play nickel. They play big-people, so they've got two big outside-backers on the edges, three big down guys, pretty athletic backers and they play zone most of the time. They don't have a lot of complicated pressures on regular downs, good third-down package, but because they play two 4is and a zero-nose and they've got these big guys in there it's hard to run the ball inside and because they've got those big guys standing on the edges it's also harder to get the ball on the perimeter sometimes. That's why they're very good against the run. The reason they play zone, they keep people in front, they don't give up a lot of big plays. I think their big play ratio is one of the tops in the country, how many big plays they make versus how many they give up. So you've got to be patient against teams like this and take what they give you and we've got to do a great job of finishing up front. We've got to get movement on these big guys and that's going to be a real challenge for our offense line."
• Kelly, "What stats do you pay most attention to in order to determine if a team is good or not defensively?"
• Saban, "Well, I think one of the most important things on defense is you've got to be able to stop the run. People who struggle to stop the run are always in negative down and distance situations on defense so it's harder to play situational defense and take advantage of the down and distance so when you can't stop the run you've really got problems. Statistics in college football are not indicative on if you're good at stopping the run or not, because quarterback scrambles and quarterback sacks are included in the run total. You could have five sacks in the game for 35 yards and give up 120 yards and maybe you didn't do very well but it only comes out that you gave up 95 yards or whatever so we don't do those statistics like that. Running plan are running plays so we can get a true evaluation are we stopping the run at a 3.3 or less rate, that's kind of how I look at it. So we put the pass plays in the pass-breakdown. Just like when the quarterback scrambles for 160 yards last week, that's a pass. We didn't defend the pass, whether it was pass rush lanes, or whether it was zone guys breaking on the guy to tackle the guy, missed tackles or whatever it was. Those were pass plays and those were passing breakdowns so to get the true stats on passing, you've got to put that in passing. Just like when you sack the guy, if you've got good coverage, sacked the guy, that should come off the passing. The stats in the NFL are done a little more like that, in college football we don't do it that way. Sometimes when you look at stats it can be a little misleading, I guess is really what I'm trying to say. How did you really stop the runs on the running plays, that's how we try to evaluate it. We were doing a little better job earlier in the year against the run. I think it's going to be really critical that we do a good job in this game because this team can run the ball and they're really good formational and use a lot of big people type of formations that create some issues that we're really going to have to play well against."
• Gold, "This isn't your father's Kentucky Wildcats?"
• Saban, "No, this is a good team. I know the pervasive attitude around here is just show up and win the game. It don't happen that way, especially against these guys, they pride themselves on being physical. They play hard. They play tough. That's how their coach coaches them. That's the personality of their coach. That's how they play. They don't beat themselves, you've got to go beat them. You've got to out-execute them and you've got to beat them. So this is going to be a tough game. They're 6-3 and Tennessee barely beat them and they had a chance to win the game in the end and couldn't score in two-minute so it's going to be a tough game.
• Nick Saban's Final Word: Well, I want to say a couple things before I do that. First of all I'm not going to get an opportunity to say publicly to say how much "Veterans Day" is coming up tomorrow of the next day. The appreciation that we all should have, that I certainly have, that our family certainly has for all the people who have made sacrifices to enhance the quality of our life. Just lately I watched one show a night of Pacific and one show a night of Band of Brothers and we went to a movie that was called, I can't remember the name of it, "The Covenant" about Afghanistan, what people went through, what people have sacrificed, what they went through to have us have the quality of life that we take for granted, so much. I just want to say to all those veterans out there how much we appreciate what you did and how you've done and how you've represented our country and how important it is to all of us that we have tremendous respect for all that you do, that's number one. Number two, the Stoops family. Uncle Bob Stoops was a high school coach in Youngstown, a defensive coordinator and a dear friend of mine and Mark and all the Stoops brothers who coach, their dad was a defensive coordinator and actually had a heart attack and passed on the sidelines during the game years ago, but was a dear friend. Each one of these Stoops guys I recruited when they were in high school. I have a special relationship with the family, Uncle Bob, tremendous amount of respect for all they've done for college football. What a great job they've done coaching wherever they've been. Those two things I just wanted to mention before we got to the final word.... But the final word to me is the same thing I said earlier here. This is an important game. How important is it to you? How important is it to all the things that you've done to create this opportunity for yourself? Do you have gratitude for the opportunity? And you look at it like an opportunity to - not something you've got to do, something you should be excited about doing, and about happy about doing. It's not something you should take for granted and you've got to have the proper respect for the other team and you've really got to know what it takes to go and have success and tough to have success in the SEC on the road, especially when you're playing against good teams, especially when you're playing against tough teams, and that's what we're up against and you've got to have the right mindset and everybody in the organization and all the fans we should not have the pervasive attitude that this is going to be just show up it's going to be you've got to play better than the other team when you play them and that's got to be the challenge for all of us." 

Each week the hosts get insight from coaches and take questions from callers and crowd members in the restaurant. It's typically an opportunity for the coaches to show a bit more personality than in their traditional media settings and over the years the program has produced a number of memorable moments.

The phone number to call "Hey Coach" is 877-202-BAMA.

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