Lane Kiffin wins this round: Nick Saban walking back his Ole Miss sign stealing comments
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Ole Miss wasn’t stealing signs on Saturday, what Nick Saban really meant to say was that Alabama was just one play behind against the Rebels all night long.
Saban sure had a different way of describing things after having an opportunity to go back and review the Ole Miss tape.
Here is what Saban said immediately after Ole Miss scored 48 points on Alabama’s defense.
“It seemed like everything we did, though, they had an answer for. I don’t know if they had our signals or what. I’m not — that’s not anything unusual. But it seemed like every time we called something, they had the best play they could have against it,” Saban said on Saturday night. “They had a really good plan.”
After seeing those comments, Lane Kiffin responded by saying, “FYI when u go as fast as we do we call our play first. Stealing signals wouldn’t help us at all because we are snapping the ball why they were still trying to just line up. #facts,” on Twitter.
When asked to clarify his sign stealing comments, Saban walked those back pretty quickly during his Monday press conference.
“I think what I was really speaking to was, we were more like, I felt like we were always one play behind,” Saban said during his first media availability of Georgia Week. “When I say one play behind, I mean, you know, sometimes when you play in the NFL against Joe Montana or somebody really good, you always feel like you’re one play behind.
“Because if you call this, they do the right thing against that. So I think that was more what I was sort of referring to as if they knew what we’re going to do. And some of that is our issue, in terms of how we disguise things, or they were going fast.”
“We were struggling to get lined up, we didn’t do a very good job of disguising things, so they were able to take advantage of a lot of situations. They know us well, so all those things probably contributed to me feeling a little bit like we were one play behind.”
That’s some serious backpedaling there by Saban.
Who says the Alabama coach has lost some speed?
A graduate of the University of Tennessee, Michael Wayne Bratton oversees the news coverage for Saturday Down South. Michael previously worked for FOX Sports and NFL.com
