Nick Saban cites two big mistakes he made by listening to players: ‘I made a lot of bad decisions’
· Yahoo Sports
Nick Saban admitted this week two of his biggest missteps he took as a coach were a result of listening to his players, including the Kick Six.
“There’s one second to go in the game -- in fact they put a second on the clock,” Saban told Chris Russo of the Mad Dog Sports Radio, per Bama 247. “It’s a 59-yard field goal. The guy (kicker Adam Griffith) can make it and there’s a little wind. But when I saw them put a guy back (Chris Davis) to return it, I didn’t really want to kick the field goal. The players kept telling me, ‘He can make it, he can make it, he can make it.’
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“Now, before, when there was no guy back there because they called timeout -- I didn’t have any problem because there was no consequence. So I listened to the players. Told our players they had to cover. They didn’t cover right. They didn’t cover it very well, and we do practice that play.”
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Then, in 2019, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa talked Saban into leaving him for one more series at Mississippi State. The result was a broken hip for the quarterback.
“We were ahead 35-(7),” Saban told Russo. “There was two minutes to go in the half. We got the ball back. I had already told Tua, ‘You’re done for the day.’ I told (Steve Sarkisian), who was the offensive coordinator at the time, Tua is done for the day. Because he was coming off being injured and I don’t think Mississippi State could have scored enough points to win the game if we had played for a week. Why do we need to put him out there? We’ll give Mac Jones some work and all that.
“So we stop them, get the ball back, and Tua and the offense comes to me and says, ‘Leave Tua in. We need to work on 2 minute before the half.’ I said, we don’t need to work on 2 minute before the half. It’s 35-(7). ‘Oh yeah, Coach,’ and Tua said, ‘Oh yeah, let me play one more series, coach. One more series. One more series.’ And he got hurt.
“So I made a lot of bad decisions.”
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