From Alabama sports information:
Head coach Nick Saban
Opening statement:
“First of all, that was a tremendous college football game on both sides. I’m really proud of the way our guys competed in the game. We didn’t play very well in the first half and didn’t start out well in the second half, but we just kept grinding. We started making some plays on offense and got the momentum of the game back. We started playing better on defense in the third and fourth quarters and came out with what was a tremendous come-from-behind win for our team. The thing you have to say about this team – somebody asked me how would you characterize this team – I would say that they do a great job from a competitive character standpoint of always making plays in the game when they need to make them. They seem to always be able to be resilient enough to play through adversity, which we certainly did today. It was great for our seniors in their last game at Bryant-Denny Stadium. It was really important to me that they have a great memory from their last game here. A lot of guys that are seniors contributed out there and down the stretch even. It makes you proud, and I’m sure our players are extremely happy to win the (SEC) West and have an opportunity to go to the SEC Championship Game.
“There were a lot of things that we need to do better as a team. You could say that in a lot of ways we didn’t play our best football, especially in the first half, but you have to give their players a lot of credit for making really good plays as well. I’m really, really proud of our team and proud of the character they showed in the second half. I just told the players at halftime, ‘We have 30 minutes. A lot of you guys have a lot of goals and aspirations. This is a gut-check as to what kind of heart you have, what kind of character you have and what kind of competitor you are in how you go out and play the second half of this game. I believe in you, I think we can win and I think we will win if everybody makes a commitment to doing their best in the second half.’ I was really pleased with the way the players responded and how they came out and played. Even though we turned it over the second play of the second half and they went down and scored, it just made the comeback that much better for our players, in terms of how they competed through adversity.”
On the fourth down conversion in the third quarter:
“I don’t think it was do-or-die. I thought we could play field position. One of the things that comes into my mind when we make those kind of decisions is if we were playing really, really well on defense, I probably wouldn’t have made that decision. But the fact is I thought we needed to score to change the momentum of the game – you have to take some chances. That was one that paid off for us, and I think it did change the game. I think it was a really big play for us.”
On Amari Cooper’s play tonight:
“We didn’t throw the ball downfield very much in the first half. The one time we did was a touchdown. I kept saying to (offensive coordinator) Lane (Kiffin) we’ve made a lot of explosive plays throwing the ball down the field, let’s take some shots on these guys and see if they can cover us deep. They (were) certainly doing that to us and we were not having much success. I think a couple of the big plays really changed the momentum of the game. Coop has been great for us all year. He certainly had a great game today. The guy played through a lot of injuries today. He was really kind of hurt, and he did a great job competing out there. He had 13 catches for (224) yards and made some extremely big plays in the game. I think we have other guys that are capable that we need to get involved offensively in terms of what they can do. DeAndrew White, Christion Jones, 13 (ArDarius Stewart) did a good job for us last week, hopefully we’ll get him back this week.”
Blake Sims, Quarterback
On the team effort to overcome adversity:
“I didn’t have a very good first half. We came in to halftime and the team said, ‘It’s okay Blake, keep playing, we are behind you 100 percent’. They rallied behind me and the receivers got open. The offensive line did a great job blocking, I just did what I had to do and get the ball to the playmakers and we won the game.”
On the two touchdown passes to Amari Cooper in the second half:
“It was a great call by coach (Lane) Kiffin. (Cooper) ran a great route on both of them. I just put the ball where it needed to be, and he went and got it and did the rest.”
Landon Collins, Defensive Back
On the defense improvement after struggling early in the game:
“We knew that as the dominant defense that we are, that we had to pull it together and focus on our keys and concepts. We knew we had to do what we have always done. We prepared for this game consistently, and we just stuck to what we had to do. We had players come in and make big plays, and we did a fantastic job at the end.”
On turning the page and preparing for the SEC Championship game next week:
“We have a 24-hour rule. Once that 24-hour rule is up, we go on to the next team, Missouri. We’ll get ready for the SEC Championship, and we want to play a dominant four quarters in that game.”
AUBURN
Head Coach Gus Malzahn
Opening Statement:
“Obviously it was a disappointing game. I think the name of the game really was that when we got in the red zone, we had to kick field goals. We kicked five of them and didn’t score our touchdowns. We had enough yards to score a whole bunch of points and that was probably the name of the game. I’m really proud of our team. They fought really hard to the end. They represented us well and fought to the end. It was a disappointing loss, especially in a ranked game, and Alabama came back and won. We have to give credit to Alabama. They are a good team and we played them on their home field.”
On not calling a timeout with 28 seconds left in the 2nd quarter on Alabama’s one yard line:
“Yeah, looking back, I probably should have called a timeout. We tried to get a formation in there and pace it. We felt good about it. We were IDing things and all that, but we’d like to have that one back, obviously. I’m not saying we would’ve scored, but I would like to at least have had a better chance at it.”
On Amari Cooper’s performance and the Auburn defense’s strategy against him:
“He’s pretty good. He’s one of the better playmakers in college football and he’s showed that. Obviously, he had a lot of yards and we did double-team him some and mixed it up. The challenging thing they have is that they have a good running game and other good receivers too. They have a good offense overall.”
Corey Grant, Running Back
On hitting a wall in the second half:
“It was just a tough night for us on offense. Like you said, we put up our yards. Their defense was playing well. It was just an offensive shootout.”
On the mentality while leading the game:
“We should have just kept the hammer down and just keep chugging away, but things change.”
Sammie Coates, Wide Receiver
On exposing the defense:
“Coming into this game, we just wanted to go out there and give it our all. Coach Malzahn told us to play our hearts out and we did that. We got in the red zone a couple of times. We came away with points most of the time. We just got three points, but it should have been a touchdown. That hurt us big time. We never gave up. We just kept fighting the whole time.”
On his connection with Quarterback Nick Marshall:
“We went out there, knew we had to make plays and we did that. Our O-line was great the whole game. Nick threw perfect balls the whole game. It made it easy to catch them.”
Christopher Walsh has covered Alabama football since 2004 and is the author of 19 books. In his free time, he writes about college football.
