Football Welcomes ULM to Bryant-Denny Stadium this Saturday
9/21/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
Head Coach Nick Saban
Opening Statement
"I was really pleased with the effort that our players gave in this last game, they really played hard. They showed a lot of resiliency to keep coming back, give themselves an opportunity to even be in it with 2:50 to go in the game, and have a chance to have possession of the ball to win the game. But, there were just too many self-inflicted wounds to overcome, regardless of the effort and how resilient we were. It would be easy to sit here and say that the turnovers were the issue, but we need to have better fundamental execution of what we are doing. There were too many negative plays on offense, too many big plays on defense and too many missed cues on special teams in terms of who is blocking who.
"I think our players had tremendous energy in this game, but we have to learn to channel our inner energy and focus into the right places so that we get better execution on a more consistent basis. That starts with me, it starts with us as coaches in terms of doing a better job through the course of week in preparing guys to be able to go out there and execute better, so that's really where it starts. The focus is to improve our team. We are looking forward now. There are many lessons to be learned in the last game, and hopefully our players will learn those lessons and we will do a good job of improving our team in the future so that we can get more consistent execution. Now we have to address the ball security issues; we have to address getting turnovers; we have got to eliminate the big plays and the negative plays on both sides of the ball. With that said, we had several really outstanding performances, Derrick Henry and Richard Mullaney on offense, Jarran Reed and A'Shawn Robinson on defense and Adam Griffith and Tony Brown on special teams. Adam had a great onside kick, did a great job on ball placement on some of the kickoffs
"We have two injury updates. Robert Foster is going to be out. I didn't think this was going to be this big of a problem, but he has a shoulder injury that will require surgery, so he will be out. Cole Mazza is out for medical reasons and when he can return, he will be back.
"UL-Monroe coach Todd Berry has done a really good job there; he has been there for a while. These guys do a myriad things on offense that are very hard to defend: a lot of formations; a lot of motions; a lot of adjustments; fast ball; the quarterback is very efficient, very accurate. They have got nine starters back on defense, and they play physically, tough defense. I think the focus for us is to get our team better, and it wouldn't matter who we were playing this week because that still would be the focus of what we need to do."
