Alabama Football vs. Arkansas Postgame Quotes
10/10/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
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Head Coach Nick Saban
Opening statement: "I was really pleased with the way we played in the second half. I thought we didn't play poorly in the first half, we just turned the ball over and didn't finish drives in the red zone. We also gave them the ball on the eight-yard line, which is where they got the touchdown. At halftime, in games like this, we knew this would be a tough game. We had a tough game with these guys last year, and we know what kind of team they are. They're well coached, and they play with a lot of toughness.
"This is when you find out who you are, and how bad you do what you want to do. So, I thought the guys came out and responded really well in the second half. The big play from Jake (Coker) to Calvin (Ridley) was a big momentum changer in the game, and I think from that time on we dominated pretty well until they hit the scramble pass at the end.
"Their quarterback (Brandon Allen) did a really good job. He was really hard to sack, and he is very elusive. We did a good job of pressuring him, but he got out of there a couple times on us and hurt us a few times with the scramble pass as well as scrambling for a couple first downs.
"All in all, I thought our defensive played extremely well in this game. I thought we moved the ball effectively on offense. We just didn't finish a couple times in the red zone. We have got to take care of the ball, and we can't turn the ball over as that is going to be really critical for us. We got one turnover in the second half.
"I thought the field position was really good, and the kicking game had a lot to do with that. JK (Scott) did a good job with the punting, except the one that was partially blocked was not his fault as it was a breakdown in protection. Kickoff coverage did a great job of putting them in bad field position, and the return game also changed field position a couple times on punts.
"The big play in the game was stopping their fake punt, which we knew they had. I think our players did a good job did a good players of routing, because we really were in a return.
"Very proud of the way the players responded to the challenge and I think it speaks a lot to the competitive character of the team, and I'm really excited about how we played in the second half."
On Arkansas' fake punt attempt: "We told them to watch out for it. We had been going punt safe, and we had a little better field position. We didn't know if they would do it, so we had a return on, but we had practiced that against the return as well, and the guys did a good job of responding to it."
On Jake Coker's performance: "Well you never want a guy to throw any interceptions. The first one was a bad interception where he kind of threw it up, and the free safety intercepted it. The second one was just a little bit high and (the ball) came off of the receiver's hands, so it was a tipped ball. Then we got the penalty on top of that, which gave them the ball at the eight-yard line. So, you never want those. One was a bad decision, and one was not a bad decision. But he made some really good throws (too). We have to do a better job protecting (the quarterback), and we have to be a little bit more consistent in our ability to block (defensive line) movement up front, which was a little bit of an issue for us in this game and probably gave us a few too many negative plays."
#70 Ryan Kelly, Offensive Lineman
On the win: "It obviously wasn't pretty, but definitely hats off to them. They are a tough team, and they have a good front seven, but overall it was just a great victory for us. We really came together in the second half, and we knew it was going to take a lot of guts, and that's what we showed out there. We obviously will clean some things up on Monday, but we couldn't be more proud of the way we fought in the second half."
On if this was a "character building" performance: "Absolutely. Looking at last year, and the Arkansas game, I think it turned the year around for us. I think we are headed on the right path right now. We keep building on each week and our attention to detail continues to improve. Putting in the effort to improve the effort is one of the intangibles you need as a team, and we definitely have that. We will clean stuff up in the film room, but it was a great victory and a great stepping stone for us moving forward."
#4 Eddie Jackson, Defensive Back
On getting his interceptions and if he's getting tips on how to run after the catch: "It's a lot of fun. There's a lot more action at safety, and I'm enjoying getting these picks. The running backs and me, we joke back and forth. In the end, we as a team just go out there and execute, do our best and play the field super fast."
On how the deficit affected the team and the ability to come back after trailing: "We came together as a team, and we had faith in our offense. The coaches told us if we went out there, did our jobs and executed that we'd be okay. We hold ourselves accountable in everything we do, and make sure to do our job every night. We go out there and execute, and when we do we have positive results."
Head Coach Bret Bielema
Opening Statement: "Obviously, give kudos to Alabama. They're a really good football team and they proved it. The good part of it was that our guys prepared all week and kept going. On the flight over we talked about how we're at a point now where we know that we can do certain things week in and week out, but we want to start turning some of this respect into, obviously, the wins in a tough environment. I thought we took certain steps last week and definitely continued to grow this week. Unfortunately, we just didn't do enough things in the second half to win. I think our defense had a good game plan and ran a lot of really good plays. [Junior linebacker] Brooks Ellis continues to get better every week and we keep bringing along some of the young guys out there. Offensively, the story of the day was that we just couldn't do anything with any consistency. We couldn't run it, couldn't throw it and couldn't convert the first downs the way we needed to. That ended up forcing our hand on a couple of other issues. Unfortunately, it's a loss but I know this: we're better in week six than we were in week one. We'll take a bye week and use the time to get some guys healthy overall and come back with six games left to determine what our future is. As a football team, I think they'll bounce back and respond as they always have and we'll see where they can go."
On Arkansas' running game being limited: "Yeah (we've been stopped before), unfortunately last year against these guys. One of our offensive goals is to respect what they can do and remember what we're about. We tried a couple of different things. I wanted to go get some tempo. We talked about doing that in the first half. In the second half we had a couple of first downs, but it fizzled on us. At times we would have a good play here and a good play there, but we were just too inconsistent. I think we had some dropped balls and we had some inconsistent routes. They had some pressure in the face of B.A. (Brandon Allen), which made him keep outside and we didn't convert on some of those. We will go back, we will watch that film and we will get better. One thing about Alabama, their defense is unique to them. We knew that coming in."
On the thought process behind the fake punt: "Alabama does a scheme where they bail a guy out and they rush three. We thought that was an opportunity to run a sweep to our right. We didn't want to go to it unless we couldn't get anything going. We continued to stall out offensively and I could feel the momentum starting to slide the other way. Unfortunately, we went to log the defense. 46 (Alabama tight end Michael Nysewander) comes off the edge every time and we stand flat. We wanted to log it and go around it. I think Toby (Baker) read it as we were trying to kick it off and go off the side and they ran into each other."
#93 DeMarcus Hodge, Defensive Tackle
His thoughts on Arkansas' play: "It's very tough. We came out and we definitely did what we wanted to do. We executed and we stuck to our scheme and our plan we had all week but when we got to the second half, we didn't do enough. We've got to keep coming out there and being consistent in what we do. I think we gave up a little too much and that cost us the game."
On his thoughts on Alabama's offense and sacking Alabama quarterback Jake Coker in the second half: "I think most of what it was is they had the factor of that it was going to take a little more to try to put on me. They tried to factor that in. They [are] a really good football team. They have an amazing coach so they were able to get some stuff going and finally got what they needed to get done in the last few minutes."
#10 Brandon Allen, Quarterback
His thoughts on Alabama's play: "I thought offensively we didn't do enough to win. The defense played really well. They were keeping us in the whole time. We had a big, big turnover for us there that gave us very good field position we were able to capitalize on. Offensively we really couldn't get anything going. Our run game was not going. I've had difficulty in past games. I felt offensively we just couldn't find that groove, couldn't find things that were working. I have to give them some credit. They are a really good defense. They did a good job defensively. I felt offensively we have to do more if we want to win in those games."
On his individual play: "It's tough any time you have a third and seven-plus or eight-plus. It's difficult to convert. That just shows how we have to get better on first and second and how we have to get positive yards on first and second downs. That's on me, just hitting check downs. Just get completions, get whatever yards we can to keep us in third management where we can have an array of calls to convert on third down. When you're third and long, it's kind of difficult to call plays back when you have to get that many yards so it's something we didn't want to be in and we found ourselves in too many times."
