Nick Saban: Alabama can still achieve goals after upset loss

Alabama football coach Nick Saban believes the Crimson Tide’s goals are still within reach. Following a monumental 41-38 upset loss to Jimbo Fisher and Texas A&M, Saban said Alabama will immediately work to fix its mistakes and get its season back on track.

“Hopefully we’ll learn a lot from this,” Saban said. “We can still accomplish everything we want to accomplish, but we got to do things better than we did tonight and we have to play better, and we got to be more consistent. We have to finish drives, we have to get more turnovers on defense, we got to get more stops on defense. There’s a lot of things we need to fix.”

A late field goal from Seth Small propelled the Aggies to their first victory against Alabama since 2012 and just the third in program history. Fisher also became the first of Saban’s former assistants to beat him as a head coach. The Alabama head man was 24-0 overall and 3-0 against Fisher in such games entering Saturday.

Alabama allowed Zach Calzada and the A&M offense to get off to a hot start, and they didn’t slow down all evening. The redshirt sophomore stepped up for undoubtedly his best game of the season, going 21-of-31 for 285 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. No throw was bigger than the 25-yard touchdown to Ainias Smith that tied the game at 38 with three minutes left.

The victory was the Aggies’ first in SEC play, while Alabama dropped to 2-1 in league contests. The Crimson Tide also fell to No. 5 in the latest AP poll. Their next chance to get back in the win column comes against Mississippi State next Saturday.

One-loss teams make the College Football Playoff seemingly every season, so Alabama’s hopes are not yet dashed. The loss also doesn’t affect them in the conference standings as they still sit atop the SEC West. If they make and win the SEC Championship Game, they are almost guaranteed a spot in the Playoff.

As Nick Saban said, the goals of Alabama are still well within reach.