During his weekly Monday press conference, Alabama head coach Nick Saban provided an update on quarterback Bryce Young’s recovery from a shoulder injury.
While not being able to opine in great length regarding his star signal-caller’s status, Saban said he was hopeful Young would recover in time for Saturday’s matchup against Tennessee.
“Bryce is getting re-evaluated today,” said Saban. “I don’t really know much. I haven’t talked to doc since he did that. Hopefully we’re going to try to get him ready to play this week. But this is something that nobody can predict how quickly this is going to give him an opportunity to be able to go out to do what he needs to do. We’ll see as the week progresses. But I don’t have an update much more than that.”
Regarding his team’s offensive performance, Saban said he believes the entire squad could improve collectively as a unit.
“We need to play better at all positions on offense relative to what we did in the last game,” he said. “And I think most of the players would probably tell you the same. … Could we get better play at every position whether it’s quarterback, wide receiver or whatever? Absolutely. So that’s what we’re trying to focus on so we can have more consistency running the ball and passing the ball.”
Turnovers have persisted as an issue thus far in the season for the Crimson Tide. This category, Saban said, was something his team needed flip to its advantage.
“This is the first time in a long time where we’ve had a negative turnover ratio at this point in the season,” he said. “We don’t get enough turnovers on defense and we’ve given the ball up more than we have historically. And both of those things need to improve.”
In Saturday’s victory over Texas A&M, Alabama had to turn to its rushing game as an effective tool to advance the ball down the field. The Tide posted only 111 yards through the air, averaging only 5.8 yards per pass.
Backup quarterback Jalen Milroe played “with a lot of anxiety,” said Saban.
“I don’t think he allowed himself to let his training sort of guide him and trust and believe in it so he can have success in executing plays,” he said. “You can’t turn the ball over and not execute plays like they’re designed, relative to the read of what you should or shouldn’t do.
“So those things are all things that we definitely need to improve on.”
Dylan Smith is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanSmithAL
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