TUSCALOOSA, Ala. _ After two days of University of Alabama fans expressing concern about everything from quarterback competition to special-teams play during Saturday’s season opener against West Virginia, a 33-23 victory at the Georgia Dome, the coach had a different take after watching the game film.

Sure the Crimson Tide made a lot of mistakes, but overall he was encouraged.

Here’s how Saban began his press conference on Monday as Alabama began preparations for this week’s game against Florida Atlantic (noon ET, SEC Network):

“The things that were encouraging were the intangible things in the game. Played with a lot of effort, played with a lot of toughness. Very physical in the game, and I think our players really competed well in the game. When things went wrong, they hung in there and played the next play and kept competing in the game and never really got flustered or lost their poise. Examples of that would be not playing great on defense, but getting two huge stops inside the 10-yard line. Offense controlling the ball like they did. Never really had any ball-security issues. In all the plays we played, the ball was never really on the ground.

“When we did turn it over, the defense that didn’t play so well when we were ahead seven points and turned it over in not great field position, go three and out. They have a kickoff return for a touchdown in the game, which is obviously not a good thing. But then get the ball back with a minute 30 to go or whatever and take it down and able to convert a field goal in two-minute before the half.

“All these things are very encouraging signs from a competitive standpoint. It’s also very obvious like a lot of first games I saw from a lot of teams, that you need to get better execution on a more consistent basis. Whether you missed the hot, missed the block, made the wrong line call and had a negative play, made too many mental errors on defense whether it’s hurry up or isn’t hurry up. We had new linebackers playing.

“None of that matters. Really, we’ve got to have better preparation, better attention to detail and more guys on our team able to play winning football on a consistent basis. Obviously first-game experience for some guys that haven’t played a lot is certainly monumental in terms of them understanding and developing.

“Everybody’s got to sort of make a commitment _ coaches, players _ that we’ve got to do a little better job of getting ready to play a game, not just emotionally, which that part of it was fine, but in terms of being smarter than the other team, playing smarter, not making as many mistakes. Not giving them opportunities to make plays because of our errors. These things are all correctable and fixable, and that’s certainly something that we want to focus on this week.”