Saban Breaks Down Texas Win, Talks ULM During Monday Press Conference

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Fresh off a heart-stopping 20-19 win on the road over Texas on Saturday, the Crimson Tide is now gearing up for a home game against Louisiana-Monroe and former Auburn head coach Terry Bowden on Saturday, Sept. 17.

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This will be the third all-time meeting between the Warhawks and the Crimson Tide, going back to 2007 when the two teams played for the first time. In that first matchup, with Saban in his first year for the Tide, Alabama lost 21-14 in Tuscaloosa.

The two teams would meet again in 2015, which saw Alabama win in convincing fashion 34-0.

Here's everything Nick Saban had to say during his press conference on Monday ahead of the game.

OPENING STATEMENT

Well, I think there's a lot to learn from this last game. I think number one, it's not just about playing hard. I think our guys played hard in the game. They persevered in the game in tough circumstances. They overcame adversity, they showed great resiliency. But it's also about playing smart, having good discipline to execute, focus on what's in front of you and do your job.

Not only do your job, but do it fundamentally with the correct technique, whether it's hand placement for offensive linemen, whether it's footwork for defensive backs, whether it's running your feet on contact when you're tackling. All these things are basically fundamental things that, people have to do every day in practice so that there aren't bad habits that show up in the game. And I think that's a big lesson for us to learn.

Second thing is, is what does it mean to be favored by 21 points?

Well, there were two teams that I know of, maybe more, I don't know, that were favored by about the same amount that actually got beat. So I guess it doesn't mean anything and that's why we have to play the games. So it's important for players to learn that they have to focus and prepare for every team and every opponent so that they can go out there and play to the best of their ability because sometimes even when you win, you can lose.

The challenge for us is from top to bottom in the organization is to hold each other accountable, to make sure that we're putting the players in the best position to have a chance to be successful, but we're also teaching them fundamentally what they need to do to be able to have success, but then they have to be accountable to challenge themselves every day to be able to do it.

That's kind of some of the things that I think we can learn from a game like this.

We're really proud of Will Reichard. He did a great job making the winning kick, but also his performance all day long, whether it was kickoff, field goal, whatever was pretty stellar. So we're glad that he's SEC player of the week.

ULMN and Terry Bowden, you know, this is well-coached team, I think they're a lot better this year than they were a year ago. I see significant improvement on both sides of the ball. They have a good little quarterback who is athletic and make plays, is a good passer and they're playing good, fundamental football on both sides of the ball.

We certainly have respect for these guys, but I don't forget things. So, I remember when these guys beat us. So I know that our players won't remember that because history sometimes is not that important. And they were probably only — what would you say? — Five, six years old when that happened, but kind of is what it is.

PENALTIES, POINTS OF EMPHASIS TO CLEAN UP

What did I just say?

I'll repeat myself. Discipline to execute, play smart, make good choices and decisions. That's what we'll do to ... we have officials out there every day. So we get a penalty report every day. Every player is confronted with you made these penalties, whether it was offsides, pass interference, illegal motion on offense, whatever the penalty is. And those things are always emphasized.

So it's not like this is sort of a resurrection of, "wow, we need to start doing something about this."

We've been doing it. Players need to make choices to have the discipline in the game, that it doesn't do any good to try to create an advantage for yourself because you're not above the law. So you gotta make good choices and decisions, but that's the discipline that I've been talking about since I've been standing up here is exactly what I'm talking about.

UA RECEIVERS GETTING OPEN IN FIRST THREE QUARTERS

We didn't play fast and do as good a job, uh, in terms of, but I do think that in the fourth quarter we sort of came of age a little bit, played faster, made plays, spread them out a little bit more, did a little better job giving them a chance and they took advantage of it.

I saw some maturation in the fourth quarter and those guys playing with confidence in making plays.

THINKING BACK TO 2007 LOSS AND POSSIBLE MOTIVATION

History doesn't seem to be on the forefront sometimes. And I do think that players relate better to things that affect them, which most of them don't remember those types of things.

I think sometimes what happens currently, like what happened last week to a couple teams, you know, is maybe something that they can identify with and relate to better.

TEXAS SECONDARY

They did exactly what we expected 'em to do. They played the coverages that we expected 'em to play. It wasn't like we were surprised by anything. I don't think we did a very good job of taking advantage of it. That starts with me and us, as coaches, as well as not executing as well as we need to and playing as fast as well as we need to.

And in some cases beating man to man coverage and being able to make some explosive plays, given the quarterback a little cleaner pocket sometimes to be able to make plays down the field. So all these things sort of contribute to doing a little bit better job of being more efficient in the passing game.

NON-SAFETY TARGETING CALL ON SATURDAY

Well, first of all, the way they called the play roughing the quarterback with targeting, they can't review roughing the quarterback. That's not a reviewable, but they did.

So they not only took off the targeting, which there wasn't any targeting. Bryce was not down when he threw the ball. One of their players actually touched the ball, so that didn't make it intentional grounding. And we did have a player in the vicinity. Jase McClellan was in a vicinity.

So it never got explained really well, but I'm giving you the facts. Maybe it just got announced wrong that it's rough in the passer with targeting. They can review targeting, but not roughing the passer. I don't know what happened with all that kind of is what it is, but I'm not complaining about it. I'm not criticizing anyone. I'm just saying, you asked me what happened, how it got explained to me, that's basically what got explained to me.

ELI RICKS GETTING MORE COMFORTABLE

I think that we go a lot by how players practice and if players have a good week of practice, I think they're ready to play and they'll go out there and be able to do their job. And I think the other players that they play with also gain confidence in them, knowing what they're supposed to do in terms of how focused they are in practicing, getting the game plan, right and all that.

We just want to continue to do a good job with him and all the other players that we have on our team to get them ready to play so that they're confident and we're confident that they go into game and they're gonna create value for themselves.

BENEFIT OF DEALING WITH ADVERSITY

I think there's a tremendous benefit for players playing on the road and what is the typical S E C environment when you play on the road playing a team that is the caliber of most of the teams that will play in the SEC. I think there's a huge benefit in that, and the fact that there's a lot of lessons that I've already talked about, that we can learn from this experience in terms of staying focused on what's in front of you when you play on the road and how difficult it is to play well on the road and being able to overcome those circumstances and still execute and play smart in a more positive way for every play in the game for 60 minutes in the game, which, we were kind of a little bit up and down, back and forth with that made more mental errors than what we'll be able to get away with in the future.

TERRION ARNOLD COMING OFF THE BENCH IN SECONDARY

We got a lot of confidence in Terrion, but again, we have a lot of competition at that position and guys need to go out there each and every day and, and play well and in practice.

I get a little bit frustrated sometimes when guys don't do things the way they need to do 'em in practice and they're not creating the right habits because especially in the secondary, there is nobody behind you.

If the linebacker misses the tackle, the safety makes the tackle. If the safety misses the tackle, nobody miss there's nobody there. If the corner misses the tackle, there's nobody left. These things are critical to us having success defensively.

We gave up too many explosive plays in this game. We had too many mental errors. It doesn't have anything to do with Terrion Arnold, but I'm just saying that as a whole we gotta get better at that part of what we do.

OFFENSIVE LINE PLAY AT TEXAS

So look, I think the offensive line as a whole has to play a little bit more physical. We gotta get better movement. We gotta have better diversity in the running game. We gotta be able to execute more consistently. Fundamental techniques. I have total confidence and ability on every guy that plays up there. I just think that we just need to get a little bit more consistent and a little more physical on how we play, so that we can control the line of scrimmage better, which I don't think we control the line of scrimmage as well as we needed to in this game.

MENTAL TOUGHNESS

I think you get mental toughness because things are hard and you gotta embrace hard.

I think that's true in your life. I think it's true in football. Tough times make hard people, easy times make soft people. It's no different in football. If it's hard, you gotta embrace hard. I have no problem with our players and how they embraced hard in this game. They showed tremendous mental toughness and resiliency to play through what they had to play through to win the game.

We didn't execute like we wanted to, but you can't fault the mental toughness. It was tough circumstances, tough crowd, very hot, we got guys getting cramps and not able to finish the game in some cases.

I don't question the mental toughness. Now you ask me, can you develop that? I think you develop it because people are in difficult circumstances and they learn how to overcome them. I don't think you can develop it if you don't have difficult circumstances, because you gotta learn how to overcome things that are hard.

OFFENSIVE VERSATILITY

We've got enough good players. I think good players have to make good choices and decisions about how they do their job, the discipline that they play with. And everybody can have one my bad. Everybody can have one loaf. We run an RPO and the receiver runs the route half speed and the quarterback is stuck. He didn't know what to do all. So all these things are correctable, but all these things need to be fixed and we need to do these things on a more consistent basis and the players have to respect those facts in terms of respecting what it takes to win.

And if they're willing to do that, we'll get better and they'll get better and they'll create more value for themselves and we'll have a better team. But I do think we need to do that.

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