re: Spring Football News & Info

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On simulating for scrimmages

Speaking generally, what are some things that you can simulate really well in scrimmages? And some things that are difficult to simulate relative to how it would look in a game?

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A football scrimmage is not the same as a football game, at least to those who have seen both, who have noticed there is no scoreboard in a scrimmage and no historical record of a winner. But to Alabama Coach Nick Saban, who is process-oriented, the scoreboard is immaterial. It’s not about the scoreboard to Saban. It’s about performance. That may be the reason his team almost always comes out on the right side of the scoreboard.

There was a reason for Saban to discuss the subject Saturday afternoon after his Crimson Tide football team went to Bryant-Denny Stadium and completed its eighth practice of the spring with its first scrimmage.

There may have been a few thousand fans – boosters, sponsors, football lettermen – scattered among the 100,000-plus seats, but that certainly did not make it like a game. That made part of Saban’s point: “Other than the fans, the noise, football is football,” he said. And he enumerated:

“I think we try to create as many situations as we can in practice,” he said. “We practice good against good (first team offense vs. first team defense) a lot, so that’s a lot like playing in a game.

“We do a lot of situational-type things, a lot of two-minute things. We did third down, we did red (red zone, inside the 20) area, we did goal line, we did coming out, we did several two-minute situations at the end.

There are 11 guys out there on both sides and the field is 100 yards deep and 53 yards wide and there’re 11 guys out there in different formations and everybody’s got to adapt and adjust and do their jobs and do the right thing. React the right way, block the right guy, press the hole and read the run the right way.

“I don’t know what changes in the game? Do they put more players on the field? Do they make you play like on ice? Is it still grass? I mean it’s no different.

“It’s only different if you make it different.

“If you make the game different and you say, ‘I want to have a lot of anxiety. And I’m not going to be able to focus on looking at the right thing. I’m not going to be able to focus on doing what I’m supposed to do,’ just like any other practice, then I guess it’s different. “But otherwise, you’re supposed to be competing, playing hard, giving the best effort you can, focusing, trying to win, covering the guy you’re supposed to cover, beat the guy you’re supposed to beat if you’re running a pass route, blocking the guy if you’re trying to block him. So, I don’t know -- I guess if you’re outcome oriented, you would think the game is a lot different. But if you’re process oriented, you try to play that particular play.” He even gave a little golf tip by way of explanation: If you have to hit a shot, it’s your task to concentrate on hitting that shot, not worrying about what your score is going to be at the end of the day.

Although there are “goals and objectives” in a first scrimmage, Saban said it is more about seeing where the team is.

He seemed to see it half empty rather than half full.
“We have some really good players, we have some guys who can play winning football,” he said. But then he added, “To me, we don’t have enough.

“We don’t have enough depth. We don’t have enough guys that execute with confidence and playing fast.”

Saban has been in the game long enough to know where to go from there.

“Keep working these guys and practicing them,” he said.

And he repeated a Saban maxim of practice.

“You don't just do things until you get it right,” he said. “You do it over and over and over until you can't get it wrong.”

That being said, Saban also said, “I think offensively, for the first scrimmage, we executed pretty well.”

A first spring scrimmage is the first of, shall we say, game-like conditions, the exercise ending with the public A-Day Game on April 13. It is a long way from an August 31 game against Duke in Atlanta.

Saban and his staff will work with the players they have now for the next couple of weeks. And, the Tide coach said, it is going to be important that some of those who will be joining the team this summer are able to add depth, particularly on defense.

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