Sep 1, 2012; Arlington, TX, USA; Alabama Crimson Tide linebacker C.J. Mosley (32) walks off the field after the victory against the Michigan Wolverines at Cowboys Stadium. Alabama won 41-14. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-US PRESSWIRE
Despite having its first Southeastern Conference game of the season in a hostile environment just five days away, Alabama head coach Nick Saban was still slightly hung-up on his team’s less-than-perfect performance in its 35-0 win over Western Kentucky.
“Not taking anything away from the other team, they played hard and they played well,” Saban said. “If you watch the film, there was a lot of lack of focus and attention to detail and doing little things correctly, which usually can bite you in the you-know-what.”
But, with that, Saban is trying to get his team to keep both of its previous two games in perspective.
“It’s one game,” Saban said. “How you progress through the season is the most important thing, how you improve through season, because the challenges are going to get greater all the time.”
Upset special
After Louisiana-Monroe shocked the world by going on the road and beating Arkansas 34-31 on Saturday, the Razorbacks fell from No. 8 in the nation to unranked.
The drop in national ranking has no impact on what the Tide thinks about its opponent.
“We’re playing a really good Arkansas team,” Saban said. “Regardless of what happened last week, that doesn’t change how we feel and how we respect their players. We still have to expect that we’re going to get their very best performance.
“We need to have our very best performance if we’re going to play the kind of game we need to play to have success on the road against what we think is a very, very good team.”
Alabama is presented with a unique challenge this week, as the Razorbacks are known as a air attack team, but also sport on of the SEC’s best running backs in Knile Davis.
“We have to be on our p’s and q’s this week,” linebacker Nico Johnson said.
Fellow linebacker C.J. Mosley says the gameplan revolves around stopping the run and forcing Arkansas to win the game through-the-air.
“If we can do that, Coach Saban can play those crazy mind games on third down with rushing and all those other things,” Mosley said.
The task of stopping the Razorback running attack seemed more simple after Davis injured his knee last season, but the defense knows it remains difficult.
“I can’t tell (Davis injured his knee),” Johnson said. “Watching film, he looks good. He looks completely 100 percent.”
Outside of gameplan essentials, Saban wants the team to focus in itself.
“Nobody here should be feeling warm and cozy because of the other team’s situation,” Saban said. “We need to think about what we need to do to be successful. Regardless of who plays in the game, they have a lot of players who are capable of making plays.”
Rebuilding the wall
Alabama’s offensive line was not immune to the team’s lackluster performance against Western Kentucky.
“When a guy gets beat, it’s either what the other guy did or what you did,” Saban said. “We didn’t play very well fundamentally. We didn’t pay attention to detail.”
Offensive lineman Chance Warmack agrees.
“Communication, for one,” Warmack said. “Some people weren’t on the same page in terms of communication, technique and other things. You can’t be sloppy.”
Sloppy may be the perfect word to describe the line’s performance after allowing McCarron to be sacked six times.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take it a little personally,” Warmack said. “We have to improve our pass protection a lot because we have a great opponent coming up.”
The line is expressing a dedication to improve on what center Barrett Jones called an, “average,” performance.
“We all feel the same way about how we played on Saturday,” Warmack said. “We need to get better as a group, collectively, and we’re taking it upon ourselves as a group to do that.”
Perry to stay?
Alabama made some changes in the secondary’s starting lineup before the home opener against Western Kentucky. Usually, Vinnie Sunseri and Robert Lester would be the starting safeties together, and Sunseri would move to the Star position and HaHa Clinton-Dix would replace him as a safety.
Against the Hilltoppers, Nick Perry and Lester were the starting safeties.
“Robert and Vinnie are both kind of strong safety types, and HaHa and Nick are both a little more free safety types,” Saban said. “We were playing Robert and Vinnie together in regular and we felt like we needed more of a free safety type.”
Saban seemed to like what he saw out of Perry against Western Kentucky.
“He did a good job of making sure he was ready to do his job well,” he said.
Lester added, “Nick’s come along very well. He’s a hard-worker. Having Mark Barron to look at in front of him gave him a lot of leadership, something to follow to put him in a great position.”
Injury Update
Outside of running back Jalston Fowler’s upcoming knee surgery that will likely keep him out for the rest of the season, Saban said that all injured players should be able to practice. This includes defensive lineman Jesse Williams, linebacker Trey DePriest, H-Back Brent Calloway, cornerback Dee Milliner and linebacker Reggie Ragland.