Nick Saban on Alabama injuries, how his team moves forward with key players likely out
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Alabama won the battle on Saturday but may have lost the war in the process.
The Crimson Tide improved to 9-1 on the season by beating Mississippi State 38-7 in Starkville but the end result of this game will be overshadowed by the hip injury suffered by Tua Tagovailoa in the game.
The team’s starting quarterback was having a tremendous day before getting rolled up on as Tua was 14 of 18 for 256 yards and two touchdowns in the first half before he had to be carted off the field.
Tagovailoa was taken out of the stadium by ambulance and was reportedly helicoptered to an Alabama hospital after being transported out of Davis-Wade Stadium.
After the game, Nick Saban was asked to share the latest on his signal-caller’s status.
“I really don’t know. It’s a hip injury,” Saban said. “It’s probably something that could be serious, so we will just have to wait and see but I’d like to talk about the rest of the guys on our team that played a really good game today and did a good job trying to reestablish the ‘Bama Factor’ and was really proud of the way our guys competed in the first half of the game.”
Unfortunately for Alabama, Tagovailoa wasn’t the only player to leave the game due to injury and not return. Defensive linemen Raekwon Davis and DJ Dale both left the game after suffering injuries on Saturday.
Here’s what Saban had to say about arguably his best two defensive linemen.
“Twisted ankle, sublux knee — I don’t know how serious those guys are but we will find out,” Saban noted.
Finally, on the importance of these losses will have on his team moving forward, the Alabama coach offered up this comment.
“Well, we will coach the guys that we got, the guys that want to play, the guys that are going to go out there and do what we have to do to be as good as we can be,” he said. “We have a lot of good players, we believe in them, have faith in them, have trust in them and will do everything we can to get them ready to play and put them in the best position to be successful.”
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
