Nick Saban reveals the biggest areas he wants to see improvement on Alabama offensive line

Alabama football might currently sit at 5-1 overall, but it certainly hasn’t been pretty. The Tide had to slog their way through a sloppy game against South Florida. They also just barely squeaked by Texas A&M last weekend, 26-20.

A big part of the Tide’s struggles this season stem from an offensive line unit that currently ranks 129th in the country in sacks allowed (26).

On Thursday night’s version of the “Hey Coach & The Nick Saban Show”, Saban stressed the fundamentals of offensive line play and highlighted the areas he wanted his team to improve in.

Nick Saban on where he wants to see his offensive line improve

“I think it’s paramount to the rest of the season that we can continue to make progress and improve on the offensive line. Alot of it is fundamentals. You know, the two most important things I think, when you play on the offensive line, is you always talk about getting your second step on the ground. But when you take short steps and get your second step on the ground, you’re always in a power position. And you always have good balance and body control. When you don’t stay square and you don’t get your second step on the ground, you tend to get overextended. You bend at the waist. You don’t have very good power and you don’t have very good balance and body control,” Saban explained.

“And then the second thing that’s most important is hand placement. You know, if you watch football, the guy that gets his hands inside. I don’t care if they’re blocking on the perimeter on a DB, or if you’re playing offensive tackle, or offensive guard. If you get your hands inside on a guy, that’s where you can really kind of steer a guy. Aight. And push pull to get movement on the guy, but also control the block. When he gets his hands inside, he can throw you and get off of blocks and makes it tough to finish,” the Crimson Tide head football coach said.

“So, I would say if I had to point to one thing. Well, I guess that’s two things that we really need to get more consistent at. Because there are times when we do it extremely well and have really good success and there are times when we’re not doing that. Especially with some of our younger players. And it really creates issues and problems for them to finish you know, blocks. And even last week when we struggled to run the ball, there were numerous occassions that we had a hole and if we would have just finished the block and pressed like we were supposed to, that we would have had more positive runs. But those fundamentals are really paramount in being able to finish,” Saban said.

“And you know, the pass protection issues, were mostly on third down last week. And you know, A&M’s got a good pressure package. They didn’t really pressure us any way that we didn’t practice. Aight. But it goes back to that same, poise, confidence, and execution. We make an out call. Aight. Because they’re bringing a guy off of on a pump stunt inside and we’re supposed to be three for three. Tackle doesn’t go out. Quarterback gets smacked. I mean, it’s just, it’s poise, confidence, and believing and trusting in what we’re calling, what we’re doing, and how we’re all working together to get things picked up,” Saban continued.

“And hey, Arkansas’s got a good defense. They’ve got a good front seven. They’ve got big guys. Aight. They’ll put pressure on ya, too. And we just have to do a better job of playing together and having confidence in what we’re supposed to do and execute together as a group. Because you know, people…said until last week said, ‘Hey Alabama can’t really throw the ball.’ I heard that a lot of times. But we can. And Jalen [Milroe] can. And we’ve got good receivers. And we can make plays in the passing game. Now, if we could get the running game established like we had earlier in the season. And be able to do some of these things in the passing game, then I think we’d be a much more effective offense because we’d have much greater balance. But that’s gonna start with the fundamentals up front,” the legendary Alabama head football coach said.

Alabama will square off against the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday, October 14th. Kick for that one is set for noon EST and the game will be nationally televised on ESPN.