Nick Saban shares if Alabama can speed up tempo

The Alabama Crimson Tide offense has struggled at times this season, at least compared to some of the team’s recent offenses. Because of that, there has been some thought that if the Alabama offenses speed up its tempo, then it could get into a better rhythm and find more success.

Naturally, head coach Nick Saban has given this some consideration. However, he’s also come to the conclusion that raising the tempo won’t help the offense unless the Crimson Tide executes the offense better.

“I think when you go up-tempo, you only get a rhythm if the up-tempo is helping you have successful plays. But the successful plays still come from execution,” Nick Saban said.

“What is your footwork? What is your hand placement? How does the back press the hole? What’s the quarterback read? I mean, it’s a whole myriad of things. Do we block the right guys on the perimeter? All these things make plays successful. So when you have successful plays and you can stack them back-to-back, and you go with tempo, I think that really puts the defense on their heels. When you go up-tempo and the play doesn’t work — that doesn’t help.”

Instead, for Nick Saban, the most important thing for the offense to do is execute, regardless of the tempo that the Crimson Tide are trying to play at.

“So, it still all comes back to fundamental execution. When everybody fundamentally executes, then you have a much better chance to have successful plays and have consistency in what you’re doing. So if you can go fast and do that, I think it can put the defense on its heels. But the first thing you gotta do is execute.”

This has been offensive coordinator Tommy Rees‘ first season in Tuscaloosa. To this point in the season, Alabama is 56th in scoring offense with an average of 30.1 points per game. Part of why that number hasn’t been better is execution, particularly a failure to execute on the offensive line.

“I do think we have guys who are capable. I think it goes back to that same attention to detail. There’s little things like, in certain protections, I know I have inside help. So, why would I get beat outside? Does that make sense? So, these are not all capability issues. Some of them are things that we could fix,” Saban said of the offensive line giving up too many sacks.

“When we’re sliding out, to block three on three, and a guy doesn’t slide out to block the third guy and he runs in and sacks the quarterback. That’s a mental error.”

Nick Saban explains asking Jalen Milroe to play like a point guard

One change that Nick Saban has made to try and help the offense was by asking quarterback Jalen Milroe to play more like a point guard. In turn, Saban believes that has helped the team do a lot better on offense.

“Well, I think that it’s just something that I thought would be apropos for Jalen in terms of his thought process. How important it is for him to execute and not think that he has to make every play, but that distributing the ball to the right place is actually making plays and the whole idea is to play winning football at your position and making good choices and decisions is probably the key to the drill there, much like a point guard in basketball,” Saban said.

“So it’s not something I’ve used in the past but I do think it’s sort of something that resonated with him, that’s helped him grow and develop at the position.”