Everything Nick Saban said on Wednesday of Kentucky game week

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Alabama head coach Nick Saban spoke to reporters after Wednesday’s practice as the Crimson Tide continues to prepare for its Week 11 road game against Kentucky. Below is everything Saban said in his final press conference before game day.

Saban’s opening statement…

“I think the most important thing is the players were a little better today. A little sluggish yesterday, but responded a lot better today. I think it’s important. It’s tough to play in our league on the road. You have to try to be the most physical team, which Kentucky kind of prides themselves in being, and you have to have the right mindset and the right mental approach to be able to do that in terms of how you practice, how you prepare and what you do for your mindset when the game comes because you can’t just turn it on and turn it off.

“You can’t just say you’re going to be the most physical team. You have to be the most physical when the game comes. You have to have the right mental approach so you’re prepared, so you can execute and be the most disciplined team when the game comes. That’s what we’re really focusing on, and I think the players were a lot better today. We’re making progress, and we want to continue to try and improve. But this is a challenging game the way these guys play on offense, defense. They have good players, so it’s going to be a test for us.”

Saban on Deontae Lawson, Jaylen Key…

“They haven’t been able to practice yet. It’s still kind of day-to-day. If guys can’t practice on Thursday, it’s pretty tough for them to (play) in the game. We’ll learn more tomorrow.”

Saban on Kadyn Proctor…

“He’s getting better. He’s playing better. He has more confidence. I think he knows what to do, and because of that confidence, he — he was apprehensive sometimes about doing what we was supposed to do even when he knew what he was supposed to do. All of that comes with confidence. It’s like young guys at any position, whether it’s making a call or whatever. They don’t want to make a call because they don’t want to be wrong. But when you get experience and you gain confidence — and you do that by making mistakes — then you learn from them. He’s continued to progress and is continuing to improve.”

Saban on Alabama’s success against the run…

“We’ll get tested this week because these guys will run it. They’re bigger. They’ll be in bigger personnel situations. We may not have all of our defensive players ready to play, but we’ve got to get the guys that are ready to play to play physical on the line of scrimmage, strike blockers up front, have good hand placement, everybody fit their gap right and make adjustments to all their formations and motions so we’ve got edges where we need to have them. So this is really a challenging game for us from that standpoint, so we’ll see how good we are against the run.”

Saban on Kentucky’s ability to create but also limit explosive plays…

“I think they play a lot of zone on defense and they do a good job of matching patterns and they always try to get underneath the deeper and play deep to short, which makes you be patient and throw the ball, check it down. I think offensively, because they can run the ball really well and they’ve got really good play-action passes and sometimes they’re only two-man routes but it’s great protection, so they have the opportunity with pretty good receivers to get downfield. So that’s probably the reason on both sides of the ball. They’re well-coached and they do a good job with the play-action game tying into their run game, and the formations and motions to get people downfield with maximum protection has afforded them the ability to make a lot of big plays.”

Saban on Curt Cignetti at James Madison…

Well, I’m glad that he’s doing well. I know that he’s done a really, really good job there. They had a good team. I know they bumped up (from FCS). I hear people talking about the fact that they don’t qualify to be in the playoffs or whatever because this is their first year. I don’t know what the significance of that rule is. I coached for Frank, Curt’s dad, so I’m very close to the family. He did a great job for us here. I’m always excited to see guys that did a good job for us when they get opportunities to have success and the opportunities to take advantage of those. He’s certainly done that well.

Saban on sluggish starts on opening drives…

“Like, the same thing that goes wrong on anything that doesn’t work. Don’t execute very well. Sometimes maybe they do a little bit something on defense or maybe what you thought they were going to play, they didn’t play. As you get into the flow of the game and see what they’re playing, guys execute a little better. It all comes down to execution, whether it’s offense, defense or special teams, just like we gave up a touchdown on the first drive last week because we busted a coverage. It wasn’t because it was the first drive, it was because we busted a coverage. They would’ve scored in the fourth quarter with one minute to go if we had played like that. It always comes down to how do you execute in what you do, and all 11 guys got to do their job, and that’s the key to having success. It’s great to start fast and it’s great to finish strong, so to do both these things is something that we’ve been trying to focus on all year long. We probably did a little better job of that in this past game than we did all year.”

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