Against Arkansas, the Crimson Tide netted 66 yards rushing. Against Ole Miss, Alabama put up 168 net yards on the ground.
“We’re really trying to focus on our players, playing hard, completing well, having fun playing football,” Alabama football coach Nick Saban said Wednesday evening.
Men’s golf coach Jay Seawell offered some advice to Saban in the form of an unusual sports legend: U.S. Triple Crown winner Secretariat, a thoroughbred that swept the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes, taking the final race by a record 31 lengths in 1973.
“They had so much pressure on them because of their debt and the horse had to win the Triple Crown, the anxiety and the tension and all that, and finally she just said, ‘Let the horse run,’ and it won by 31 lengths at the Belmont,” Saban said Wednesday. “Well, that’s what we’re trying to let our guys do, just let them run. Just let them play.”
Alabama did just that with the Aggies. On the ground, the Crimson Tide pounded out 298 yards on 45 carries, averaging 6.6 yards per attempt.
“I knew as long as we did what we did, everybody do their job, dominate their space like Coach always says, then good things would happen for the offense,” sophomore running back Derrick Henry said.
Henry had 70 yards rushing on 10 carries. He ran in an 8-yard touchdown in the second quarter to put Alabama up 31-0. Five minutes later, Henry caught a screen pass from Blake Sims that turned into a 41-yard touchdown.
Junior running back T.J. Yeldon led the team in all-purpose yards with 159. He caught three passes for 45 yards through the air and had 114 yards on the ground on 13 carries. He ran in two touchdowns. In the first quarter, he ran one in nine yards. Early in the second quarter, he punched in a 1-yard touchdown on fourth-and-goal to put Alabama up 17-0.
It was Yeldon’s 14th career 100-yard rushing game. He is tied for sixth place with Eddie Lacy in the Alabama record books for career rushing touchdowns with 30.
Alabama’s rushing game helped the team earn 602 total yards of offense. It is the fifth time this season that Alabama has surpassed 500 yards of total offense.
At the end of it all, Saban fell back on the Secretariat analogy.
“Sometimes you get people so tight and so anxious that they don’t play with the personality that they’re capable of – that’s something that we’ve been working on since the Ole Miss game and I think our players have responded to it, and I think they’re having more fun playing, which is really what we want them to do,” Saban said.
