Alabama coasted to a 47-23 victory at South Carolina as the Crimson Tide led 24-10 at halftime and improved to 3-0 on the season.

Here’s what Nick Saban told reporters after the game as the Crimson Tide move on to play Southern Miss next week:

  • “We don’t have enough players to get through the season if we play 86 plays of defense every week, but the defense has to get off the field. We had opportunities to get off the field on third down, had way too many penalties in the game. We stopped ourselves with penalties and we helped them with penalties on defense by jumping offsides on third and 10.”
  • “There’s a lot of fixing to do, there’s a lot of things we can do to improve.”
  • “I like the chemistry of our team, I like the character of our guys. I just hope we can stay healthy enough to persevere.”
  • LaBryan Ray will have an MRI on Sunday or Monday following his leg injury. He was the only serious injury that Saban mentioned.
  • “I thought all of our receivers played well. They all had some explosive plays, some good run and catch opportunities. I thought Najee Harris played really well in the game. Our skill players on offense played extremely well.”
  • “There was a lot confusion with the young guys with formations and the motions and some of the things that they were doing.”
  • “We need to have more balance on offense. It’s great that we’re a great passing team. I’m happy with that and I think we’re doing a great job of featuring some of our best talent on our team by what we’re doing. But I also think from a team standpoint, we need to run the ball effectively as well.”
  • “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. And if we’re making it work and we’re moving the ball and we’re making plays, why change? Again, I’m going to tell you that probably half the passes today were run-pass options, RPOs. They were playing a lot of cover 6 and eight guys, six in the box, and those are all reads to throw. That’s the deal. I’m not apologizing for that because we continue to make plays, but I don’t think you can totally depend on that. I think last year we got to where we were so good at doing that, we didn’t do other things well. We played really good teams at the end and we couldn’t do enough other things to be effective.”