Photos and Video From Alabama Football's First Padded Practice of Fall Camp

Alabama football practiced for two hours outdoors at the Mal Moore Athletic complex on Wednesday.

Joe Gaither | Aug 9, 2023

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Alabama Crimson Tide

Nick Saban met with the media after the first padded practice of fall camp on Wednesday. The veteran coach emphasized consistency in performance and the desire to establish good habits throughout the length of practice, correlating the end of practice with the end of a game scenario.

"So I think the number one thing we need to focus on is - we have to increase the level of attention to detail, focus on every play. So we can play and not have penalties and missed assignments. You know, communication goes with that. I don't care whether you're playing offensive line, you make a line call. Whether you play in the secondary and you make a coverage call. So everybody's on the same page and you can anticipate things and you can play better and you can play faster but I think sometimes when things get a little bit like, difficult, we lose our focus a little bit."

One of the interesting things somebody brought to my attention, the two longest games that we had last year, almost four hours long, two games, Tennessee and LSU, we made mistakes at the end of the game which were very costly. So the ability to sustain this level of concentration and focus, no matter what you call it, whatever, is something that we really, really need to do and continue to work on so that we have a chance to be more consistent as a team and don't make plays that are drive killers or give up explosive plays on defense or help the other team with penalties or whatever it is."

I like the attitude that the team has. I like the togetherness. I like the sense of commitment to the principles and values that everybody seems to be buying into, but that's something that we need to work on and every guy has got to do a good job of working on that. Today was the first day in pads, obviously, we've gotten chased inside by the rain a couple days, so this was one of the first days, second day that we were able to stay outside for the entire practice and it's a great opportunity for us to be able to stay focus in these kind of conditions, especially toward the end of practice when guys are getting tired and Saturday's scrimmage will be no different. You know, we want to evaluate whether guys can block, tackle, execute what they're supposed to do, not so much try to gameplan and experiment with things but just seeing how guys can play winning football at whatever position."

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