Everything Nick Saban said following Alabama's 46-41 loss to LSU

"Offensively, we certainly scored a lot of points and onside kicks are difficult. The ball has to bounce your way. But we gave ourselves a chance to win in terms of the way we fought back in the game. Very proud of our players for that.

"So, as an organization, starting with me and everybody else, we need to learn from this, do a better job, give our players a better chance to be successful. And our players have got to take advantage of that by going out there and executing and making the kind of choices and decisions that’s going to help them be the best players that they can be. And I think there’s a lot to be learned from that in this game."

"We couldn’t run the ball very well, which was an issue. I think we got some pressure at times in the pocket. I just don’t think we executed on all cylinders. We got a few penalties that put us behind the eight ball. We have to have more balance and more consistency on offense. We make a lot of big plays, which is great. But when you play a team like this that is a very good offensive team themselves, having the balance on offense where you can control the tempo of the game with your offense is also important. We just didn’t have that consistency in the first half. You throw the turnovers on top of it, and we really put ourselves in a hole."

"They did a lot of check with me’s out there. Give the hands, see what you’re in, try to run the best play. The only disappointment that we had is we want people to do their job. There were a few occasions where, whether it was a miscommunication or maybe a player didn’t take the quarterback when he was supposed to on a zone read, or we didn’t play the gaps exactly right. We didn’t cover them correctly. We had a couple of busts in the secondary that were very critical. But they do a lot of things, a lot of different formations, a lot of empty, a lot of reloads that take a lot of adjustments. We played six defensive backs a lot in the game thinking we could adjust better to that. I think we did, but we still made some mistakes that gave them plays. 

"You got to give them a lot of credit. Their quarterback is a really good player. I thought we did some pressure on him a couple of times, but we didn’t finish on him a couple of times on sacks that we had a chance to get. I think getting them behind the sticks is really, really important. Giving them negative plays and creating enough negative plays to do that, we probably didn’t do a good enough job of that often enough in the game to try to get stops. We had a chance to stop them on third-and-10 once and we tried to pressure them and didn’t get the back covered. Got to give him a lot of credit. He ran through a guy for four or five more yards to get a first down."

"Since the result we got was what we got, I wish we had ran the ball. I wish we had taken a knee. We had two timeouts. We were trying to throw a chunk play and maybe hit a big play. We have a lot of capability to do that. We trusted the quarterback to make a good decision. The guy broke on the ball and intercepted the ball. Based on what happened, I definitely -- if I had to do over and I knew that was going to happen, we would have kneeled on the ball. But being aggressive in the game at the time, I thought that we would throw the ball down the field and give ourselves a chance to make a play, and even if it was a bad play, it would be no worse than a punt. That was obviously a mistake on our part and I take all the blame for that."

"I think he was 100 percent. I think obviously missing some time, missing some practice — I think that he played well, he made good plays in the game. I thought his mobility was probably not 100 percent, but I thought he short-area quickness in the pocket. Maybe he couldn’t run 100 percent, maybe he was 90 percent. I don’t really know. But this was a medical decision and his decision. The docs cleared him to play, they cleared him to practice all week. He practiced all week, he didn’t have any issues and he said he could play in the game and he wanted to play in the game and he thought he could go out there and do his job.I think he was a warrior in terms of what he did. And I think probably missing the practice that he missed over the last couple weeks, he may not have been quite as sharp as normal. But I thought he did a good job in the game, and I’m proud of the way he competed in the game."

"I don’t know. In these kinds of games, I think it’s really, really important to have the right mindset with players. There’s no question about how bad they want to win. Aight? But you have to be able to focus on doing things that are going to enable you to get the result you wanted. You’ve heard me say this before: when you focus on outcomes, it’s a distraction. You got to focus on the things you need to do to get the outcome. Sometimes when you want to do something really badly, it’s very difficult to do that, especially if you’re affected at all by any external factors, which you hear and what’s going on. So we really try hard to get our players to do that. 

"But we seemed to be a little out of sorts in the first half, which I’m responsible for the mindset of our team. So obviously I didn’t get that done with them. I think at halftime, we just kind of challenged everybody to say, ‘Hey, look guys. That’s probably the worst half we’ve played all year long. We made a lot of mistakes. We’re better than that. Let’s everybody check their hole card and go out and compete and play in the second half and see if we can get ourselves back in this game.’ I was really pleased with the way our players did that. They did a good job of that. We at least gave ourselves a chance. We couldn’t make the plays when we needed to make them and I was really proud of the way our players did that in the second half. I think we played better."

"I think it’s the system. I think it’s the things that they’re doing. I think it really features the players. I think he has -- talking about the quarterback now, Joe -- has a really good handle on what they’re trying to do. It’s challenging to defend. It utilizes the people that they have. Look, they have no weaknesses on offense. They’ve got a really good runner. They got a really good quarterback. They got really good receivers. They got a good offensive line. They got a system and a scheme that is very sound and solid in terms of -- and they do a really good job executing. I can’t give them enough credit for what they do. It’s nothing like what they tried to do a year ago. It’s completely different and I think it features their players. I think their players buy into it, have confidence in it and do a great job executing it. I felt like that going into the game and I certainly feel just as strongly now about that after having played them."

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