Saban doubles down on Mississippi State being bigger challenge than Ole Miss
As is the case every week, Alabama head coach Nick Saban opened his press conference on Monday by reviewing the previous game and discussing the Crimson Tide’s next opponent.
When he began to break down Mississippi State to kick off the fifth game week of the season, Saban raised some eyebrows with his comments on the Bulldogs compared to other teams that Alabama has faced this year, especially its most recent foe, then-No. 15 Ole Miss.
“This is actually a bigger challenge for us than the last two games, in my opinion, in terms of this team is very physical,” Saban said Monday. “Very aggressive on defense, create a lot of negative plays, got a lot of starters back. They know their system. They know their scheme. They play very, very well.”
Mississippi State (2-2, 0-2 SEC) is 10th or worse in the SEC in every major team offensive and defensive stat category entering Week 5 of the college football season. But Saban is impressed with the Bulldogs’ defense under head coach Zach Arnett, who took over after the passing of Mike Leach last year, especially from a pass-rushing standpoint with 10 sacks.
He doubled down on his Monday stance during his appearance on The Pat McAfee Show.
“This team is a pressure team on defense,” Saban said. “They’re pressuring all the time. They blitz all the time. They’ve got a lot of different looks. They do a lot of different things. So execution becomes even more important because they’re gonna try to give you bad plays, you’ve gotta minimize that, and then you’ve gotta take advantage of explosive plays when you get the opportunity to do it.
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“This team really, to me, is better than all the teams that we’ve played so far, except Texas, in terms of the caliber of players, how they play, how tough they are, how physical they play.”
Alabama’s trip to Starkville, Miss., on Saturday, Sept. 30, will be its first road game against an SEC opponent this fall, and Davis Wade Stadium is a difficult place to play due to the cowbells State fans rings throughout the contest. Saban is expecting a challenge from the Bulldogs in what will be the head coach’s 22nd meeting with MSU (He is 20-1; 15-1 at UA).
“We’re playing an SEC game on the road in a tough place to play, so this is not anything that requires any kind of a mental letdown,” Saban told McAfee and company. “This is a build on the second half of what we did last week and understand why we did it and be able to continue to do it and not get frustrated in this game because of what might happen.
“Because they’re gonna create some plays, but we can’t get frustrated. We’ve got to keep playing the next play. We’ve got to play for 60 minutes. That’s what it’s gonna take in this game because they’re a physical team. They’re a good team. I mean, the South Carolina game, they turned the ball over a couple times down in the red zone or that’s a different game.
“So this is a good team.”
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