LISTEN: Nick Saban discusses impact of losing Dylan Moses to ACL injury
By Keith Farner
Published:
This is not the first time Nick Saban and Alabama have lost a key linebacker early in the season. So the Crimson Tide have a bit of a blueprint to make up the slack left by the season-ending injury to Dylan Moses. But that doesn’t make it any easier.
In an appearance on the Dan Patrick Show, Saban outlined his reaction to the injury, and in trademark Saban fashion, how the rest of the team should react.
“It’s really disappointing,” Saban said. “It’s disappointing first of all for the player. It’s going to be a character check for him. Have to go through what he has to go through to come back, to miss the season. He was a leader on the team, I think, being a signal caller on defense. Sometimes very similar to being the quarterback.”
As a sophomore in 2018, Moses was selected to the All-SEC second team by the league coaches, was a finalist for the Butkus Award, annually given to the nation’s top linebacker and recorded a team-high 86 tackles with 10 tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks.
Saban went on to tell Patrick that the loss “has a significant impact on a lot of the other players on the team.”
“So it’s a character check for them to be supportive to help the guys that are taking their place. To have the knowledge, help them get the knowledge and experience so they can go out and perform well,” he said. “Even though they don’t have the experience, we can certainly support them and help them to get the experience to develop. I think that’s basically how we have to handle it as a team. I don’t think you replace guys like that, because they have so much knowledge and experience and they’re very good players and leadership is important to everybody else. But you do have to support the next guy the way that you can and everybody has got to sort of take it as a character check and a challenge to do their best, to do their part to be even better than before so that we can still be successful.”
The Crimson Tide take on Duke on Saturday in the season opener in Atlanta.
Here is audio of Saban’s reaction on the show:
Video courtesy of AT&T AUDIENCE Network
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
