Nick Saban sends strong message to team, keys in pregame interview

Last week’s loss to Tennessee make’s Alabama’s matchup against Mississippi State an important one. Prior to kickoff, Nick Saban shared his message for his team — and the keys to victory.

ESPN’s Holly Rowe spoke with Saban before the game to assess Alabama’s preparation for the game. All week leading up to the showdown with Mississippi State, Saban preached attention to detail. That was once again his message following last week’s penalty-riddled loss to the Volunteers at Neyland Stadium.

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“You never know if they’re prepared, but we had a good week,” Saban said. “I believe in the team. It’s time for us to respond. Respond with your ability, how you run, how you tackle, how you play, how you cover, how hard you play, how tough you play. Those are the key things. We’ve got to get back to doing the simple things right.”

Nick Saban details what Alabama did wrong in loss vs Tennessee

After Alabama’s 52-49 loss to the Tennessee Volunteers, head coach Nick Saban opened his press conference with the laundry list of issues that led to the final result.

“I’ll kind of tell you what I told the team,” Saban said after the loss, “very disappointing loss, we didn’t answer the bell today. Obviously, there’s a lot of work to be done. Way too many penalties did too many things to help them, gave up explosive plays, had a major error on special teams that was totally unnecessary that led to a score on their part.

“We didn’t execute well enough. Have to give our players credit for fighting back and having an opportunity to win at the end. Wish we could have done things a little different in the end. Play a little better, we played way too soft to let them go down the field 50 yards to get in field goal range.”