Nick Saban Says Mississippi State is Better Than Anyone Alabama's Faced Except for Texas
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama may have been in a top-15 clash with Ole Miss last week, but head coach Nick Saban thinks this Saturday's game on the road against Mississippi State is a bigger challenge for the Crimson Tide.
"This team, really, to me, is better than all the teams we’ve played so far except Texas in terms of the caliber of players, how they play, how tough they are, how physical they play," Saban said about Mississippi State Thursday on the Pat McAfee Show. "We’re playing an SEC game on the road in a tough place to play. So this is not anything requires any kind of a mental letdown. This is a build on the second half of what we did last week and understand why we did it and be able to continue to do it."
Earlier in the week during his Monday press conference, Saban called the Mississippi State game a "bigger challenge" than Alabama's previous two games, doubling down on that statement with his comments on the Pat McAfee show.
The Bulldogs are 2-2 with a blowout loss to LSU and close loss after a back-and-forth game on the road at South Carolina last week. Saban said that South Carolina game could have been different if not for some red zone turnovers by Mississippi State.
Alabama played arguably its most complete half of football in the second half of the win over Ole Miss and building on that performance has been his main message to the team this week.
"We have to build on the fact that we have to get better execution on a more consistent basis," Saban said. "This team is a pressure team. On defense, they’re pressuring all the time. They blitz all the time. They’ve got a lot of different looks. They do a lot of different things, so execution becomes even more important because they’re going to try and give you bad plays. You’ve got to minimize that, and then take advantage of explosive plays when you get the opportunity to do it."
