But Saban isnt content to merely have his most productive defender on Johnny Football duty. Thursday night, he pulled a page from Texas A&Ms playbook and tried to recruit a 12th Man to help eliminate one of Sumlins most effective schemes. There is one aspect of this game that nobody has said anything about, Saban said. These guys have a hard count, and theyve gotten the other team to jump offsides an average of at least four times a game. One time at Houston, they had [an opponent] jump offsides 11 times in a game. Now, they dont just get you to jump offsides. When you jump offsides, they do what Sam Wyche used to do at Cincinnati. Everybody runs a takeoff. So they throw the flag. The defense is offsides. The defensive players stop. Everybody takes off. Free play. And they throw it up. Three or four times a game.
These guys have to communicate some kind of way. They can use hand signals. We can make it difficult for them. Those kind of things affect them as well create a lot of passion and enthusiasm for our players with the kind of atmosphere we create in that stadium Saturday. Im telling you, this is the most important one of the year from that standpoint.