Nick Saban responds to undisciplined penalties, how he will address

When Alabama loses a football game, you can bet coach Nick Saban wants to know how it happened and get whatever the primary issues were corrected in a hurry. When it’s something obvious, like the undisciplined penalties plaguing the Crimson Tide this year, watch out.

Saban made no bones about it Monday. Jobs are on the line.

“I think if you continue to do it consistently, maybe we need to play somebody else,” the Alabama coach said. “There’s always a little fear that goes with respect. And respecting what it takes to win, you also should know my job could be in jeopardy if I don’t do the things you need to win.”

Here are some sobering statistics for Alabama.

Only two teams in the country at the FBS level have been penalized more times per game than Alabama’s 9.4. Only three have racked up more penalty yardage per game than Alabama’s 79.9.

Saban wasn’t irate Monday. He didn’t really raise his tone when answering the question about undisciplined penalties.

But as a matter of fact, he simply stated the reality.

“We can’t go hang ’em up for doing this,” Saban said. “There are players we need to get them to understand what they need to do not to allow these things to happen and understand the consequences of what happens when you do it.”

How Saban will target undisciplined penalties

Alabama has been one of the models for program discipline since Saban took over in 2007. Though there have been occasional outlier years — this one certainly fits that bill — generally the Crimson Tide play smart football.

Why? Habits.

“I think you’ve got to do it in practice,” Saban said. “I think you create all these habits in practice. I think we’ve got to make players more accountable in practice for doing things correctly, paying attention to detail and doing the little things right.”

In any case, it’s clear Saban plans to send a strong message to his team following the Tennessee loss.