Alabama fell behind to the Ole Miss Rebels 7-6 in the first quarter before coming back to claim a 33-14 victory over the Rebels.
The Tide had problems with efficiency on offense and struggled to score a touchdown early in the game. The game proved to be the toughest challenge for Alabama so far this season.
“It was a hard fought win for us,” head coach Nick Saban said. “We are certainly happy for our team to be able to get a win. I don’t think the people probably give Ole Miss enough credit…there are definitely some things we need to do better. ”
Saban also said the Tide needs to do better in the red zone and with its passing game.
“When they scored and coming in for the return unit, I kind of wanted to change the atmosphere of the game and the flow of the game,” Jones said. “Not make it so where the offense had to drive down. In my mind, I was thinking, let’s go ahead and get one to the house. Let’s change the atmosphere of this game.”
“We knew we were going to have to overcome adversity during the game and I think we did that well when they scored and we came back out,” junior Dee Milliner said.
“I think he’s taking what the defense gives him and I think he’s reading what’s he’s supposed to read,” Saban said.
Perhaps the brightest part of the offense was freshman Amari Cooper’s performance. He caught eight passes for 84 yards and two touchdowns. Cooper’s performance was what Saban and the rest of the coaches have been waiting to see in a game setting and not just in practice.
Ole Miss came into Bryant-Denny leading the Southeastern Conference in rushing. However, the Alabama defense proved its worthiness by holding the entire Mississippi squad to 80 yard rushing.
“We’ve had a lot of confidence,” sophomore Vinnie Sunseri, said. “We just want to keep playing hard and we stress turnovers, turnovers, turnovers. We didn’t get any last week and that’s something we really stressed this week during practice.”
The Alabama defense accounted for three interceptions and five sacks. Ole Miss quarterback Bo Wallace accounted for two of the Rebels’ interceptions and was sacked four times.
“[Turnovers] kill you,” Wallace said. “They put our defense in a bad spot. I don’t really have much else to say about it. I just killed my defense.”
“I think [we adjusted to the no huddle] after that first or second drive,” senior Jesse Williams said. “We knew they were going to do that stuff, we practiced it a lot. It’s a lot faster when they do it. Once we started to get their tempo and start controlling our tempo, it worked out for us.”
Alabama has a bye week next weekend and will head to Missouri Oct. 13 for another SEC contest.
