Alabama coach Saban says Dont'a Hightower will need surgery on knee

TUSCALOOSA – Alabama coach Nick Saban’s two-sentence statement on Sunday indicated that, as expected, sophomore linebacker Dont’a Hightower will be lost for a significant amount of time, if not the rest of the season.

“Dont’a Hightower’s MRI confirmed that he has ligament damage in his knee that will require surgery,” Saban said in his statement, issued by the school late in the afternoon. “Dont’a is a fine young man, has been an outstanding player for us, and we are confident he will make a full recovery.”

The third-ranked Crimson Tide will play its first true road game of the season this Saturday at Kentucky. They will visit Lexington without their regular will linebacker who is, as Saban calls Hightower, the team’s best pass rusher.

Clearly, a big challenge falls to linebackers Rolando McClain, Cory Reamer, Eryk Anders and Courtney Upshaw, who all stepped up in Hightower’s absence in Saturday’s victory over Arkansas.

But Saban’s defensive coaching staff will certainly be evaluating personnel groupings as it plans how one of the nation’s best defenses will move forward.

Saban was complimentary of both his coordinators after the team’s 35-7 win over the Razorbacks. He seemed annoyed that too much was made of the “Saban defense vs. Bobby Petrino offense” theme before the game. He praised defensive coordinator Kirby Smart’s game plan.

“All this B.S. out there, you all create stuff that I’m not happy about sometimes. Sometimes I let you know and sometimes I don’t,” Saban said. “Bobby is a great offensive coach, Kirby Smart is the defensive coordinator here and he did a fantastic job of getting our players ready to play in this game. So all this stuff about this guy versus that guy and all that, that’s B.S.

“We have a defensive coordinator, we have an offensive coordinator. (Smart) did a great job today of calling the game, putting the plan together, teaching the players and all of that. I help him, I’m his GA, and that’s it. All that got proven out there today is that I’m a better GA than somebody else. That’s not really fair to our coaches on our staff or anyone else.”

Saban said Alabama’s defense on third down was crucial to Saturday’s victory.

“I think that’s a real key against a team like this, to keep them from moving down the field,” the coach said of the Razorbacks, who were just 2-for-14 on third down. “We gave a lot of different looks, played a lot of odd stuff, dropped eight guys sometimes, rushed four guys and rushed the ‘wrong’ four guys and dropped other guys at times. Played a little more zone today than maybe we normally would. But I think basically we did a good job of executing what we did and we had pretty close coverage for the most part.”

In short, they threw the kitchen sink at Ryan Mallett, who after the game still didn’t sound sure about what Alabama did to him.
“They didn’t confuse us, but they brought pressure,” Mallett said. “They brought some pressure that we hadn’t seen. We need to go look at that on film and see what we did wrong.”

Of course, Alabama’s offense used big plays to open a big lead on the Razorbacks. The biggest of those was a trick play out of the Wildcat formation in which quarterback Greg McElroy hit Julio Jones for a 50-yard touchdown pass.

Saban credited offensive coordinator Jim McElwain for the right call at the right time.

“I think Miami (Dolphins) scored a couple of touchdowns on that last year. Sweep, toss it back to the quarterback and throw it,” Saban said. “That was a play that we were going to run in the first half, no matter what. The situation at midfield to take a shot was a good time to do it, and Mac did a great job of calling it.”

Saban said he’d like to see more vertical passing plays called.

“We have some pretty good skill guys,” he said, noting Marquis Maze, Jones, Mike McCoy and Earl Alexander. “Even if you don’t complete those passes, you have got to throw them. We should throw them more than we throw them. …

“When people play middle-of-the-field coverage — that means there’s nobody behind the corners; split safeties means the corners are up and there’s somebody behind them — if you’re going to play that, live and die with that all the time, you have got to put some pressure on the corners and make them cover you.”

So both the offensive and defensive staffs will be busy this week in Tuscaloosa. But the defensive adjustments will be more crucial.