What Nick Saban said during Wednesday presser before Ole Miss

Alabama football is getting ready for its third top-25 matchup in only five games. This time, it will be a home game against No. 12 Ole Miss inside Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Alabama coach Nick Saban addressed the media for the third time on Wednesday evening. The first came early on Monday, with the second being during the SEC Coaches Weekly Teleconference on Wednesday morning.

During the late press conference, Saban spoke a lot about Ole Miss and the challenges that lie ahead. He also mentioned his hope for a loud, packed-out stadium on Saturday with the Rebels coming into town.

Here is everything Saban said during his second press conference:

Opening statement

Well, practice has been pretty good. Players seem to have pretty good attention and focus on what they’re doing, what they’re trying to do. This is a difficult preparation on both sides of the ball because of the way they play on defense is a little different and you know their offense is very multiple and they do a good job of taking advantage of whatever you do on defense. Our players have been really good. I talked to players afterward about you’ve got to be accountable for your actions because there’s always a day of reckoning. And if you do the right things, you have the right effort, you have the right habits, you do the right things, you have the right words, you’re accountable to everything that you do, then your reckoning is always good. When you don’t do that, you know, sometimes things don’t work out so good when the reckoning comes.

This is probably the first big game that we’ve had here for now like a year and a half because of last year with COVID. I know we’ve had a couple home games but this is an SEC game at home for the first time in a couple years, and I hope our fans are as excited about it as our team is. Playing a really good team. They got a lot of really good players. They do a great job in execution and it’s gonna be a real challenge for us. When we played down in Florida, I mean it was really, really tough on our team. And you could tell. So hopefully we can make it a little bit that way for their team. We’re just excited to be playing in a big game at home in our stadium against a good team, and hopefully, our fans, our players and everybody will have great passion and enthusiasm for this game.

This is college football mental health week. We’re part of the Hilinski For Hope group, always have been very, very supportive of the family and the cause. So we’re proud to be a part of that awareness this week, as well.

On the importance of having an effective play-action game…

I think play action is always a good thing. I mean it’s got to tie into the running game, and I think when you can draw the defense forward when you’re trying to throw the ball vertically, it’s always a positive thing. I think when they drop more guys, it gets a little bit more difficult but I still think it’s got to be a big part of what we try to do.

On recent struggles against tight ends…

I think the couple times the tight end has caught balls against us at Florida and in the last game, it was because of our lack of execution, not necessarily because the guy mismatched somebody physically. Obviously, when we played Florida last year and they had Pitts, that was a mismatch, and they took advantage of it and we didn’t do a very good job on him. But we haven’t really had a guy like that this year. Last year, Ole Miss’ tight end was a problem for us. So they used a tight end effectively, they play four wideouts sometimes and use a receiver like a tight end and he’s very effective. So we’re going to have to be very aware of where that particular guy is relative to their play-action passes.

On the impact of Lane Kiffin’s father, Monte Kiffin…

I think Lane’s dad was really instrumental in a lot of things. I remember. I think he was at Nebraska way back when I first started coaching. I can’t remember if I was at West Virginia, I think I was at West Virginia and we went and visited him and Pete Carroll was actually with him at the time. But he was really the first coach, that I remember, that actually coordinated front and coverage. Where you over-shift the front one way and balance the coverage back the other way and tied it together in a way that was very, very effective. And then he gets a lot of credit when he was in Tampa for Tampa 2, which I think he was the first person to do that and it caused people a lot of issues for a long time. So I always had a ton of respect for Lane’s dad, Monte. He visited here a few times when Lane was here. I just think he’s a wonderful man and his legacy as a coach is not necessarily because he won a lot of games or was a great head coach but what he did to impact the game was probably as significant as anybody I know.

On how to stay ahead against Ole Miss…

I think the players gotta get lined up. We can’t do too much. Last year, we were a young group. They were going fast, we had trouble getting lined up. We were out of position a lot of times. Because we were out of position, we missed a lot of tackles. So I think that we have to play fast, we have to get lined up, everybody’s gotta be able to focus on their responsibility because these guys are really good at executing what they do. So you have to be really good on defense of executing what you do. And making mental errors because you’re not lined up correctly or you don’t have good communication is something that they’ll take advantage of every time.

On what similarities he sees in Kiffin, Hugh Freeze…

I think there’s probably some similarities but I think this is pretty unique in terms of what they’ve put together, how they do it. There’s some similarities to spread, but they run the ball and they run it effectively. They’re really good at it and then they’re really good at taking advantage of _ anything you do to stop the run, they’re going to throw RPOs or play-action passes to take advantage of that. They have man beaters when you play man to man. It’s a very well-orchestrated offense but it’s also not only well-conceived but it’s also very well implemented in a game to take advantage of what the defense is doing.

On how Bryce Young was able to build trust…

I think that anybody trusts anybody because, first of all, they respect what they do. They’re accountable to what they do. They do what they’re supposed to do, aight. That’s as a person, as a student, as a player on the field. And that’s how you develop respect for someone as a competitor and as a player. And then when they do that over time, that’s what you develop trust that the guy’s going to do what he’s supposed to do because he’s done it over and over and over again. And I think that’s how his teammates develop trust and respect.

I mean, you could go down a list of guys on our team. They probably would never tell you if you asked them, but they all know who they can trust. Who’s going to run the right and catch the ball at the right depth and all that. And they probably know some of the guys that they can’t trust to do that, and it’s because those guys have not been accountable to do it the right way on a consistent basis. Then the result is kind of the reckoning based on what happens when you go perform, which is every game that we play.

I think that’s how anybody gains trust, that you do things the right way over a long period of time, and people come to find out, ‘Hey, you can believe what this guy says. He says what he means. He’s going to do what he says. And he’ll go out and execute it every day.’ And that’s how you develop trust. I think that’s how anybody develops trust.

Full press conference…