Instant Analysis: No. 11 Alabama 26, Texas A&M 20
Instant Analysis: No. 11 Alabama 26, Texas A&M 20
Transcript
00:00 [BLANK_AUDIO]
00:01 >> For FAMOUS Central's incident analysis here from Kyle Field,
00:04 I'm Katie Widnum with Blake Byler and Austin Hannon after Alabama's 26 to 20 win
00:07 over Texas A&M.
00:08 Alabama now has sole possession of first place in the SEC West,
00:12 career day for Jalen Milrue.
00:14 Austin, why don't you start us off talking about that,
00:16 about Milrue and the offense's performance today?
00:18 >> Yeah, I mean, we kind of talked about it all week.
00:20 Everybody's been talking about it.
00:21 A&M's got a great defensive front.
00:23 Obviously, we saw that.
00:23 I think they finished the Alabama offensive with 13 rushing yards.
00:26 If you had said that before the game, you're putting up feeling too good.
00:29 Based on how the passing game has been, but not just Jalen Milrue, but
00:32 Jermaine Burton, both of them career games for Alabama.
00:36 Burton nearly 200 yards, Milrue way over 300, I think, at the end of it, 320.
00:41 So the passing game worked finally.
00:43 Something clicked, Bond got in on the action too.
00:46 So they kind of showed that maybe they could throw the ball.
00:49 A&M's secondary is not as good as some of the ones they faced this year.
00:53 But it's still Texas A&M's got a good defense.
00:54 And when you're not gonna be able to run the ball, always,
00:57 every game this year, you're gonna have to throw the ball.
00:59 And did they prove today that they could do that?
01:01 Today, a lot.
01:02 It's not a lot, but maybe at least some every game.
01:05 So it's big for the team moving forward that they might have an identity as
01:09 a passing team now.
01:10 And what better way to deal with them on the road in a big game like this?
01:13 >> Yeah, it was a little bit of opposite of what we saw last week,
01:15 where Alabama barely threw the ball and ran a lot of his mistakes.
01:17 Today was the opposite.
01:18 I think Alabama proved that if the defense is gonna challenge him to throw the ball,
01:21 that it's something they can do.
01:23 Jermaine Burton, like you all said, kinda stepped up at wide receiver.
01:26 But Blake, Saban said that maybe the key turning point in the game was
01:29 Caleb Downs' interception.
01:30 Talk about some of the big plays that Alabama had on defense,
01:32 especially teams that maybe swung in favor of their opponent.
01:35 >> Yeah, there were a couple times.
01:36 The one that Saban was mentioning was Jalen Milrow threw an interception in
01:40 Texas A&M territory.
01:41 And three, four plays later,
01:43 Caleb Downs comes off with an interception to give Alabama the ball right back.
01:46 Saban said at the press conference after the game that that was kind of what
01:48 shifted the momentum of the game.
01:50 It was, I think, early in the third quarter.
01:51 So from there on, Alabama kind of kept the momentum and
01:54 ran with it in a point way in winning the game.
01:56 But then even later, Alabama had the ball up seven with a chance to go down and
02:01 maybe go up 10 or even 14.
02:03 Jermaine Burton gets a catch.
02:04 She fumbles also in Alabama territory.
02:07 And Alabama, I think four plays later, gets a blocked field goal.
02:10 But they return for a touchdown.
02:11 Chris Braswell blocks it and returns it.
02:13 Gets called back for- >> Another touchdown round for
02:15 Penn State. >> Right, exactly.
02:17 Maybe a questionable blindside block call, but still got Alabama the ball back when
02:23 A&M was once again threatening to score, threatening to tie the game.
02:25 And so Alabama's defense multiple times was put in really difficult situations
02:30 that they needed to kind of bail the offense out in the way after a turnover.
02:33 And it was honestly what they couldn't do against Texas.
02:36 When Texas would get the ball down in Alabama territory after a couple
02:39 interceptions and they scored.
02:40 In this game against Texas A&M, they were able to get stops.
02:42 That's the reason Alabama won the game.
02:44 >> Yeah, I thought it was a really interesting post game from Saban.
02:46 He comes in and says, do you want the good news or bad news?
02:48 He was obviously pretty heated about that last series when Alabama kind of
02:51 inexplicably threw the ball at first down after they could have just won the clock
02:54 out, but he realizes next year is gonna fix it, obviously upset the Celtics as well.
02:58 But he said this might be a record game for him in terms of winning the game with
03:01 the amount of mess ups they had.
03:02 And if Alabama can clean those things up, they can be a really, really good team.
03:06 And I think we've seen pieces of that all season.
03:08 Today we saw the passing game.
03:09 Last week we saw the rushing game.
03:10 We've seen the defense a lot of times coming up with big plays.
03:13 And so we talked earlier this week on just a minute,
03:16 would this be Alabama's toughest game yet?
03:17 And it might be.
03:18 The schedule kind of lightens up a little bit over the next couple weeks.
03:21 So it's a big win for Alabama today.
03:24 >> Home cooking.
03:25 >> Yeah.
03:26 >> Home cooking. >> Don't have to go on the road again until
03:27 I think November 11th at Kentucky or something like that, mid November.
03:31 But that'll wrap this up from Kyle Field for Austin Haney and
03:34 Blake Weiler, I'm Katie Windham.
03:35 Thank you so much for watching.
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