Alabama Football Begins the 2016 Season Against USC
8/29/2016 6:56:00 PM | Football
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - The University of Alabama football team entered its game week schedule and preparations for its season opener with No. 20 USC on Monday. Head coach Nick Saban and select players met with the media at noon, before the Crimson Tide put in a two-hour session in full pads at the Hank Crisp Indoor Facility later in the day.
Monday marked the first of four practices before Alabama heads to Arlington, Texas, to take on the Trojans in the AdvoCare Classic on Sept. 3. The game is set to kick off at 7 p.m. at AT&T Stadium with the Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit and Sam Ponder on the call on ABC.
The Crimson Tide will practice three more times this week before traveling to Texas on Friday.
Nick Saban met with the media prior to practice on Monday afternoon. Following is his opening statement:
"Well, we're excited for game week, and we are excited and our players are excited as well to have the opportunity to play a great program with great tradition like the University of Southern California. This is always sort of a bowl-like atmosphere when you play in these first neutral-site games, and I know our players are very excited about it. Opening-game success comes more from an internal scoreboard in terms of where are and if we are doing the things we need to do to play winning football. Are we getting the kind of attention to detail, discipline, focus, so that when you sit down at the end of the day you say regardless of what the score was good bad, or indifferent: Did I play to my standard?; Did we play to our standard?; Are we doing things relative to the standard that we have created for each individual player?;Â For my unit?; For our units? You measure yourself based on that, not what anybody else thinks or anyone else says, and I think that is really, really important for our football players and our football team, especially at this point, because there is no identity at all. Regardless of what has been said, voted on our anything else, it means nothing in terms of what we need to try and create as an identity as a football team.
"Southern Cal has an outstanding team. Clay Helton has been there for a good while, and they have been very productive offensively under him. They have nine starters back on offense, which makes them a very good offensive team. They have good runners, JuJu Smith-(Schuster) is one of the best receivers we're going to play against all year. Their offensive line has a bunch of starters between them and they are very quality football players. They have been able to run the ball effectively against most people that they have played, so I know they have a new quarterback, but he is a very talented guy and I'm sure he'll do a great job for them. Defensively, our word is that they are much improved. They have a new coordinator, and he has done a good job with these players. They have an influx of new players, so they have some very talented guys on special teams as well. They have a great returner who is very explosive in the kicking game, so this is going to be another area that is very challenging for us.
"I think this game will be a challenge for us in many many ways in terms of who we are playing as well as who we are, in terms of what we need to do. From a quarterback standpoint – which I know is the first question you are going to ask – we are sort of down to two guys here. Cooper Bateman and Blake Barnett are probably the two guys were getting ready to play in this game and that is the way it's going to be for right now. We are going to try to continue to develop all of our guys, and we make this choice with what is going to give us the best chance to win this game, and it's also about future development of our players. We want to play the guy that's most ready and will give us the best chance, but we also want to develop guys that can compete at this position in the future, and that's kind of where it is right now. So, there is really nothing else to talk about or nothing else to say (in regards to quarterbacks). I know they are going to give you a depth chart, which you guys will just absolutely love. I know that it used to be we created the depth chart, now you create the depth chart based on what you think, so that's okay too. Just know that what you think doesn't count."
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