Tennessee (6-0, 3-0 SEC) defeated Alabama (6-1, 3-1 SEC), 52-49, at Neyland Stadium in Week 7.
Alabama head coach Nick Saban met with media Monday and discussed the Week 7 matchup at Tennessee.
Saban provided analysis of his team’s performance against the Vols after he watched game film.
“After watching the film, this is kind of a collective loss by our team,” Saban said. “I don’t think we played the way we wanted to play for sure. We didn’t execute the way we wanted to play. We had a few great individual performances. Guys played extremely well, but we also had some guys that, it’s our expectation, that we need as coaches to try to help them get to where they can play better. There was too many things that we did in the game. I mean, 17 penalties is, you know, just 130 yards of field position, probably lost about 70 yards of field position on special teams. Whether it was a poor execution by a specialist or, you know, the mistake we made on trying to pick the ball up when it wasn’t a live ball. I mean, that’s 200 yards in the game, so that’s like two touchdowns probably. Gave up explosive plays on defense, which is something that we have done a good job of to that point of not doing. The last five plays of the game, we didn’t execute. We can talk about running the ball, but we dropped a pass, clock would be running and we would be closer. We missed a hot and don’t run the route right, clock would be running and we would be closer.
“This is something that from the bottom up. I’m talking about coaches. I’m talking about every player. I’m talking about me. We all got to do a better job to, you know, help these guys learn from their mistakes, improve and get better. This is not the way you want to manage through a season by games coming down to the last play, and the things that you did up to that point got the game to that point. We want guys to focus on, you know, hey, have fun doing your job, have great energy and enthusiasm and intensity and go out there and play the next play. Don’t worry about results and the consequences of those results, because sometimes that creates anxiety, which sometimes doesn’t lead to positive performance, so that’s something that we need to improve on.”
Below are statistics from the Tennessee-Alabama game.