Nick Saban explains how Alabama makes in-game adjustments at halftime

During his weekly appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, this time around, Alabama head coach Nick Saban broke down exactly how he attacks the halftime break.

For Saban, it’s all about gathering intel from the first half. In discussing halftime adjustments in general, Saban prefers to have all possible information in front of him in order to best devise a plan to begin the third quarter.

“Yeah I think No. 1 is you gotta get really good information and have everybody assigned to some sort of detail of what they need to get when the first half is happening,” said Saban.

“So every play that happened in the first half, you know, we actually have drawn up on a template that we can show the players. And we can say, ‘okay, this is what they’re trying to do, this is what we need to adjust to.’ Same thing on offense. We got a template where, ‘okay, they ran this stunt, they’re running this blitz, this is different from what we practiced against, this is what we have to do.”

So, the info is key. As an example, Saban then explained what he would do if, say, the opposition was having success on a certain formation.

“If there’s something in that which requires an adjustment — like, I’ll use an example. Like, how are we playing bunch passes on defense? Well, they’re running a pattern, that the way we’re playing the bunch pass, it’s tough,” Saban continued. “So we gotta say ‘okay, we’re gonna go play it this way.’ And I think, if you have the right information, you can make those kind of adaptations and adjustments at halftime.”

Nick Saban says the same is true on offense as well, perhaps even more so. He noted that most teams open the game with a set script of plays they want to run, so Saban suggests such a strategy can be successful in the second half as well, especially if you’ve made proper adjustments from the first half.

“We always try to put a plan together on offense. ‘Okay, how do we want to start the second half?’ Everybody talks about … you got this 20-play script, you know, that we’re going to start the game with. Well how about having a script for how you want to start the second half based on the information you got in the first half,” Saban said.

“And I think all those things can be beneficial for you in terms of the way you go out and start.”