Nick Saban addresses how he balanced utilizing new film vs old film during LSU preparation

Alabama head coach Nick Saban has been around for a while, in the midst of his 17th season as the head man for the Crimson Tide. With that experience comes all of the knowledge necessary to execute a perfect game plan, which Saban and his staff will be looking to achieve as they host LSU this weekend.

Saban joined the ‘Pat McAfee Show‘ on Thursday, and was asked by former NFL linebacker AJ Hawk how he balances game planning against the past work of the coordinators versus what they’ve done lately in the season.

“I think you want to do a little bit of both, you want to understand history, what people have done,” Saban said. “And I think that’s one of the things that I always, and Chuck [Pagano] will probably agree with this, that when you’re in the NFL because there’s 32 teams and you play the same teams quite often you sort of develop this history on all the coordinators and all the people that you’re gonna have to play against. You kind of know what to expect because of this history.”

“I think in college we probably do a little less of that, but we do it some,” Saban added. “And you kind of see what parts of what they’ve done in the past fits with the players that they have now and that’s really what you have to get your players to understand how you have to stop it.”

The Crimson Tide will surely have to do their best to stop LSU’s high-powered offense this weekend, which has taken a major leap compared to last season averaging 13 more points per game as the SEC’s top offense this year.

“What LSU does man offensively, first of all the quarterback is phenomenal. He’s a great athlete, he can run, he’s a very good passer, he reads things, he’s got great anticipation on where he’s gonna go with the ball,” Saban said about Tigers’ quarterback Jayden Daniels. “He’s got really good skill players outside, they’ve got a good back, they’ve got a good offensive line, they can run the ball downhill at you. But they’re really running triple option in a lot of the quarterback runs they have. Zone read, arc zone read, street, so they got a dive, a quarterback running, they got a guy running in the flat that can be the pitch man.”

It’s always good to know and be in tune with the tendencies and history of an opposing coach, but with the way LSU’s offense in particular has evolved this season, Saban is keeping the main focus on what the Tigers have been doing lately.

“So these things all compliment all the other things that they do. So to answer your question, we’re trying to focus on what they’re doing now because that really is important in terms of the way they use their personnel and they have really good personnel,” Saban concluded.

Alabama and LSU square off this Saturday at 7:45 p.m. ET in a matchup airing on CBS.