Alabama's Nick Saban sees shifting tide in college football

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The old adage in football goes, "Defense wins championships."

But Alabama football coach Nick Saban is starting to see things differently as college football offenses get more pass-happy and the scoreboards start to see high-scoring games.

 

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“It used to be that good defense beats good offense. Good defense doesn't beat good offense anymore,” Saban told ESPN on Friday. “It's just like last week. Georgia has as good a defense as we do an offense, and we scored 41 points on them. That's not the way it used to be. It used to be if you had a good defense, other people weren't going to score. You were always going to be in the game.

“I'm telling you: It ain't that way anymore,” he said.

And Saban isn't exactly a fan of the new way.

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“I don't like it,” he said. “But we just have to make sure we have an offense that's that way and that explosive, which we have.”

Alabama can light up the scoreboard with the rest of the schools in the nation but it’s on the defensive end where the Crimson Tide struggle. The team is 37th in points allowed per game and 61st in yards allowed per game.

“We're not very good on defense, average at best, but I think we will get better,” he said. “We're going to get there, but this group [in the secondary] doesn't have enough experience. You've got to go through growing pains with these guys because they see so much stuff now in college football. We see something different every week.”

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Alabama has a perfect chance to get the defense right on Saturday. The Crimson Tide take on Tennessee. The Volunteers only scored seven points in a loss to Kentucky last week.