Saban addresses OL issues with snaps, pass pro in loss to Texas

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – After one week, Alabama was back to committing too many penalties. In its 34-24 loss to Texas on Saturday night, the Crimson Tide was flagged 10 times for 90 yards – just one week after its lowest penalty total in 50 games (2 vs. Middle Tennessee).

All five of Alabama’s offensive fouls were committed by its offensive linemen, including two that erased touchdowns by Jermaine Burton. Two of the five flags were illegal snaps by center Seth McLaughlin, who also hiked the ball low multiple times in the game. It’s the second week in a row that McLaughlin has had snapping issues, which shocked his head coach.

“It was very surprising to me,” Nick Saban said after the loss. “We haven’t had an issue with that in the past. We haven’t had an issue with that in practice. And those kinds of things put you behind the eight ball on offense. You get a 5-yard penalty. We had a couple of those. False starts, I think we had two snaps and one starts. It puts you behind in the sticks.”

Saban continued by preaching discipline to his team during his post-game presser.

“It’s great to have emotion and play with emotion,” Saban said. “Everybody should have that, but that emotion has to be channeled into tangible, functional execution. So you’ve gotta focus on the task at hand one play at a time. It’s gotta be very intentional. If you get emotional, then you make bad choices and decisions. Your brain doesn’t work like it needs to, and bad things happen, whether you make mistakes on defense, whether you snap the ball poorly, whether you jump offsides. 

“I mean, we had a chance to stop them at the end of the game a couple times and couldn’t get off the field. Let them bleed the clock. Just all in all, we just didn’t do what we needed to do to have a chance to be successful against a good team.”

The Alabama offensive line also had trouble in pass protection Saturday night, allowing the UT defense to sack quarterback Jalen Milroe five times in addition to nine total tackles for loss and four quarterback hurries. That was the opposite of what the Crimson Tide front seven was able to generate against the Horns, ending the night with zero sacks and three hurries.

Saban discussed both sides of the ball when asked about Alabama’s offensive line lapses.

“A lot of those sacks were 4-man rushes,” Saban said. “One of them, I think, was a 3-man rush. We didn’t get any pressure on their quarterback. We’re trying to play so we could cover their receivers and rush four guys, and we didn’t affect him at all. The third down stuff that we did do, they did a good job of moving the pocket, picking us and playing man-to-man. So we didn’t do a very good job of affecting their quarterback, and we just gotta do better. 

“I can’t sit here and say one guy broke down in pass protection. I know something different happened just about on each one of those. And I think sometimes we held the ball at quarterback. We’ve gotta do a good job of reading it and getting it out of your hand. And I don’t think we did a good enough job of getting away from people and getting open, and they did a good job of matching the patterns.”

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