Alabama coach explains player grading

Alabama football coach Nick Saban outlined a brief, but intense picture of how detailed the individual instruction is during spring practice.

“We look at every rep a guy takes in practice,” Saban said Saturday after Alabama was in full pads Saturday for its ninth practice of the spring.

“We actually do things on an individual basis ... even in practice, 7-on-7, team, whatever. He made this many mental errors, made these corrections, make notes on each guy. We take every corner, every time they are in man-to-man, bump-and-run, we put it on the reel so they look at it.

“So when I tell them they’re squatting their feet and they’re not supposed to, they can see it first-hand every time they did it. So if they had 30 bump-and-runs
in the practice and they squatted their feet 29, they can see they’re pretty consistent in doing it wrong.”

Now, that was a made up example, but Saban did say after Wednesday’s first scrimmage that Alabama hasn’t broken defensive backs into free safeties and
strong safeties. The intent is to expose players to both jobs.

“Well, we actually don’t have a free safety. We play right and left safety so everybody gets work,” said Saban, who must replace All-American free safety
Rashad Johnson by the fall.

“It’s always been my theory that it’s a lot easier to play strong safety than free safety, since you got less multiples, but yet in certain formation adjustments,
you’ll be forced to play strong safety because of adjustments you have to make. ...

“So, you know, we don’t have a free safety right now. But Justin Woodall did a nice job (in the scrimmage), Mark (Barron) is making progress, Ali (Sharrief)
made some progress, Robby Green made some nice progress, I think he had seven tackles (in the scrimmage), had an interception.”

Offensive guard Mike Johnson missed Saturday’s practice after he sprained an ankle Friday.

“Somebody fell on his ankle,” Saban said.

Running back Mark Ingram, who injured his hamstring early last week, was also held out.