With an injured quarterback’s game status up in the air, and an upcoming game as a heavy favorite against Texas A&M, the ingredients for a classic Nick Saban press conference rant were all there Monday. Before anyone could even ask a question, Saban addressed the topic on nearly everybody's mind: Bryce Young’s health.
"I know you're interested in the injury situation. Really, there's no updates on Bryce," Saban said. "He's got a little bit of a shoulder injury. It's not a long-term type of injury. He's gonna be day-to-day when he can get back to throwing, and we'll just have to evaluate it day-to-day. So I can't tell you if that's going to be today, tomorrow or the next day. Brian Branch, not going to practice today, but should be OK after today. Justin Eboigbe has got a neck injury that we're having specialists look at to make sure we manage correctly, and we're not going to allow him to play until we can get the exact most expert plan of action for him and his future."
The press conference got more intense from there when Saban was asked about game strategy, the media creating outside noise and whether he would consider using a Jalen Milroe package, regardless of Bryce Young’s status.
"We already have one. You want us to put a new one together just cause he might play or use the old one?" the coach said. "I mean, we can do either one. I'll go to the offensive coaches and see. I don't talk to Jimbo on a regular basis, but I'll call him and tell him right after the conference if you want me to. You guys think I'm going to tell you what we're going to do with our offense and our team? You might as well make it up. I saw today where there was headlines in the paper that I'm going to keep it a secret what we're going to do with Bryce. It sounded like me making that statement. I never said that, but it was there in black and white. So you can make up whatever you want to make up. Look at somebody else's running quarterback and say they should put these plays in. I think that'd be a better way to do it."
Finally, a question about handling social media sent Saban over the edge and also gave him the opportunity to get through to his players by way of the media and talk about the “rat poison.”
“Obviously, at times, we haven’t handled it very well because I was talking about rat poison last year when we played this game, and nobody wouldn’t listen. Players wouldn’t listen, y’all didn’t listen," he said. "They had lost the week before. We were big favorites. It was like no big deal, just show up for this game and go play the next game. I don’t get affected by it because I don’t listen to you all. I don’t really don’t have any interest in what anybody thinks about any of this stuff. I do have an interest in how it affects and impacts the players on our team, and I think it does. And I think they have to show maturity in how they manage and know that external opinion, external noise, whatever you wanna call it – rat poison, whatever it is – absolutely has nothing to do with the outcome of the game.
“Just like fans have nothing to do with the outcome of the game. They don’t block, they don’t tackle, they don’t catch passes, they don’t make sacks. All they do is make noise, and if you wanna take them out of the game, just play well, execute and then they won’t be there. They’ll leave. So there are external factors that cannot affect how you think as a competitor in terms of respecting winning, respecting what you have to do to win and how important it is, knowing that we’re going to get the other team’s best game because they can all get well beating us. So that’s how I try to handle it. Does anybody listen? Sometimes, sometimes not.”
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