Nick Saban explains move toward more home-and-home matchups

Alabama has seen a form of transition in terms of their early season scheduling. After usually starting on a neutral field against a big-time opponent, the Crimson Tide have started to see more home-and-home series instead.

There’s a reason for that according to Nick Saban. As he said during his press conference on Monday, those neutral site games don’t hold as much value to their program as they used to considering some of the success that they’ve had later on in the season in big-time games.

“I think that one of the reasons that we did games away from home, or neutral sites games, is it was a way to get a quality opponent on the schedule early on, which I thought had a lot of benefits in terms of your team developing in the offseason, looking forward to that game,” explained Saban. “The Clemson game that we had the second year that we were here probably did as much to sort of ignite the program in a way.”

“After you do that for a while and you start having success? Fans are going to playoff games and bowl games and different things? They don’t have the same significance,” said Saban.

Now, instead of going to a neutral site, Saban sees more value in bringing a big name to Tuscaloosa and, in turn, going to their home field as well. That then makes it a great opportunity for his team as well as the team’s fans to play in and watch a quality game.

“To have more quality home games for the fans to see becomes a little bit more, I think, important,” said Saban. “I think that’s kind of, in a nut shell, sort of why we transitioned back to this.”

Alabama will complete the second part of one of those home and homes with Texas this coming weekend. After going to Austin last year and leaving The 40 Acres with a one-point victory, the Longhorns will be in Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday in a primetime matchup with the Tide that will include an appearance from College GameDay.

Saban provides updates on DBs Jaylen Key, Malachi Moore

Nick Saban and Alabama cruised to victory over Middle Tennessee State on Saturday but they weren’t unscathed.

Alabama’s defense saw some serious contributors injured during their Week 1 showdown. Specifically, defensive backs Jaylen Key and Malachi Moore both left with injuries, not returning against the Blue Raiders.

Saban elaborated on the status of both Key and Moore on Monday.

“They’re both day-to-day,” Saban said. “So it’s probably too early to tell, what their circumstance will be. Probably be a couple of days, and we’ll figure it out. But I don’t think either guy has long-term issues, but it’ll be interesting to see how they progress this week.”

Additionally, Saban also provided an injury update on WR Emmanuel Henderson.

“He has a hip injury. It’s going to probably be a few more weeks before he gets back into the swing of things,” explained Saban. “Hard to know exactly when. They’ll do some re-checks on him here in the next week or two. He was having a great fall camp. Did a great job on special teams. Made a lot of progress as a receiver, so we’d love to get him back.”