Nick Saban cites 'lack of communication' for offensive line issues

Alabama football coach Nick Saban said the offensive line failed to communicate early in a 41-38 loss to Texas A&M on Saturday. That led to a lack of time for quarterback Bryce Young to get the ball out, and little space for the running backs to make plays.

“I think most of the issues were created by communication — or I guess you could say lack of communication,” Saban said. “They did give us some different looks, which we need to adjust to. The quarterback, running back and offensive line all have to communicate and get on the same page. I think we did a little better job picking things up in the second half. We made the adjustments that we needed to make. But it was an issue, especially in the first half. I think we got sacked three times or something like that. We didn’t communicate very well on who’s lining to who and how we’re picking things up.”

The Crimson Tide gave up a total of four sacks in the game, their highest total this season. That is in large part due to an Aggies defensive line that is among the best in the country. However, Alabama and its offensive line didn’t live up to the extremely high standard Nick Saban sets this past weekend.

They will look to change that going forward beginning with a matchup with Mississippi State on Saturday. Kickoff for that contest is set for 7 p.m. ET in Starkville.

The performance was certainly out of character for an Alabama offensive line that ranks ninth in the country, allowing sacks on just 5.4% of their pass attempts. Don’t expect that to carry over against the Bulldogs, as Alabama enters as a 17.5-point favorite.

“Hopefully we’ll learn a lot from this,” Saban said after the loss. “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.”

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, it’s hard to envision them not making the Playoff.