What Nick Saban Said on Wednesday of Kentucky Week

A full transcript of everything Saban said to the media on Wednesday night.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama head coach Nick Saban met with reporters on Wednesday night ahead of the Crimson Tide's matchup at Kentucky on Saturday afternoon at Kroger Field in Lexington.

Here's a full transcript of the media availability:

Opening Statement

"All right guys, so I think the most important thing is, the players were a little better today. A little sluggish yesterday, but responded a lot better today. I think it’s important. It’s tough to play in our league on the road. You have to try to be the most physical team, which Kentucky kind of prides themselves in being, and you have to have the right mindset and the right mental approach to be able to do that, in terms of how you practice, how you prepare, and what you do, for your mindset when the game comes, because you can’t just turn it on and turn it off."

"You can’t just say you’re going to be the most physical team. You have to be the most physical when the game comes. You have to have the right mental approach so you’re prepared, so you can execute, and be the most disciplined team when the game comes. That’s what we’re really focusing on, and I think the players were a lot better today. We’re making progress, and we want to continue to try and improve, but this is a challenging game the way these guys play on offense, defense. They have good players, so it’s going to be a test for us."

Deontae Lawson, Jaylen Key injury updates?

"They haven’t been able to practice yet. It’s still kind of day-to-day. If guys can’t practice on Thursday, it’s pretty tough for them to [play] in the game. We’ll learn more tomorrow."

Kadyn Proctor in practice?

"He’s getting better. He’s playing better. He has more confidence. I think he knows what to do, and because of that confidence, he — he was apprehensive sometimes about doing what we was supposed to do even when he knew what he was supposed to do. All of that comes with confidence. It’s like young guys at any position, whether it’s making a call or whatever. They don’t want to make a call because they don’t want to be wrong. But when you get experience and you gain confidence — and you do that by making mistakes, then you learn from them. He’s continued to progress and is continuing to improve."

Good on run defense. Why?

"We’ll be tested this week because these guys can run. They’re big. They’ll be in bigger-personnel situations. We may not have all of our defensive players ready to play, but we’ve got to get the guys that are ready to play to play physical on the line of scrimmage, strike blockers up front, have good hand placement, make good adjustments on the formations and motion so we have edges where we need to have them."

"So this is really a challenging game for us from that standpoint. So we’ll see how good we are against the run."

Kentucky making explosive plays on offense and defense?

"They play a lot of zone on defense and do a good job of matching patterns. They always try to get underneath the deeper and play deep to short making you be patient."

"I think offensively because they can run the ball really well, and they have really good play-action passes. Sometimes there are only two-man routes, but it’s great protection, so they have the opportunity with pretty good receivers to get downfield."

"That’s probably the reason on both sides of the ball. They are well-coached and they do a good job with the play-action game tying into their run game, and the formations and motion to get people downfield with maximum protection has afforded them the ability to make a lot of big plays."

Former assistant Curt Cignetti at JMU?

"Well, I'm glad that he's doing well. I know that he's done a really, really good job there. They had a good team. I know they bumped up [from FCS]. I hear people talking about the fact that they don't qualify to be in the playoffs or whatever because this is their first year. I don't know what the significance of that rule is. I coached for Frank, Curt's dad, so I'm very close to the family. He did a great job for us here. I'm always excited to see guys that did a good job for us when they get opportunities to have success and the opportunities to take advantage of those. He's certainly done that well."

Slow starts on opening drives, why?

"Like, the same thing that goes wrong on anything that doesn't work — don't execute very well. Sometimes maybe they do a little bit something on defense or maybe what you thought they were going to play, they didn't play. As you get into the flow of the game and see what they're playing, guys execute a little better. It all comes down to execution, whether it's offense, defense or special teams, just like we gave up a touchdown on the first drive last week because we busted a coverage. It wasn't because it was the first drive, it was because we busted a coverage. They would've scored in the fourth quarter with one minute to go if we had played like that. It always comes down to how do you execute in what you do, and all 11 guys got to do their job, and that's the key to having success. It's great to start fast and it's great to finish strong, so to do both these things is something that we've been trying to focus on all year long. We probably did a little better job of that in this past game than we did all year."

See Also:

Strong Defensive Adjustments Turning Alabama Football Into a Second-Half Team