Nick Saban reflects on Alabama pass rush vs. Utah State ahead game vs. Texas

Alabama always has a great pass rush. And that trend isn’t stopping in 2022. Heck, the best returning pass rusher in college football plays for the Crimson Tide. You’ve heard of him. His name is Will Anderson and he’s completely dominant as an EDGE rusher. As is the unit as a whole, even though their performance against Utah State was underwhelming.

The Utah State Aggies actually out-sacked Alabama, crazy as it sounds. USU only finished with one total sack, but the Tide failed to put the quarterback on the ground even once. Can’t be too many times under Nick Saban where that happened. But it did, against a Mountain West team, no less.

So, time to panic about the pass rush for Saban and the Alabama staff? Nah, says the head coach. At his press conference on Monday, Saban expressed that he wasn’t concerned about the lack of sacks because of how Utah State played.

“Well I don’t know if we can really assess the pass rush against Utah State because they threw the ball and got the ball out so quick you didn’t have a chance to get a pass rush,” Saban explained. He then revealed that he was actually pretty happy with the pressure his defense got on the quarterback.

“But I do think we affected the quarterback in the game. Pushed in the pocket. We had some free runners, you know, in his face, which affected his throws.”

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Saban also said that the Aggies’ quarterback didn’t do his three-step drop or wait for plays to develop. He knew ‘Bama’s playmakers would get to him too quickly to waste time with all of that, so instead, he got the ball out quickly. Which did help him avoid sacks.

“But typically…dropped back, hold the ball, see it develop and throw it. They didn’t do much of that, all right. So the ball was catch and throw all the time. So we didn’t have a lot of opportunity to get the proverbial sack. But I do think we affected the quarterback pretty well in the game.”

So take it from Nick Saban. The Tide pass rush was effective despite not recording a single sack.