TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alabama coach Nick Saban, as he’s done throughout his celebrated career, has turned adversity into a teaching moment — with the latest hardship more unusual than most in the form of a global pandemic.
“What is your DNA as a competitor?” Saban said he asked his players when they don’t have a large crowd to fire them up during a game. “Because you can’t really count on external factors like the crowd and the noise and the band, and a lot of those things that can appeal to your emotions when you’re playing in a game.”
No. 2 Alabama hosts No. 13 Texas A&M at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, as the Aggies try and snap a seven-game losing streak to the Crimson Tide. A&M is hoping that a Bryant-Denny Stadium limited to 20 percent capacity — roughly 20,000 fans because of the coronavirus pandemic — helps neutralize what otherwise would be a decidedly home-field advantage for Alabama.
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Meanwhile, Saban is counting on his players’ competitive molecules kicking in the Crimson Tide’s first home game this season.
“I’m sure we’ll have the best atmosphere that we can, relative to the number of people that we have in Bryant-Denny Stadium. We’ve always had great support here,” said Saban, who’s won five national titles at Alabama from 2009-17. “At the same time, the players can’t count on that — it’s got to come from their DNA. Who they are, how they choose to compete and how they create value for themselves.”
Saban is 19-0 against his former assistants, including 3-0 against Fisher, who was his offensive coordinator at LSU in the early-to-mid-2000s. Saban beat Fisher once when Fisher was at Florida State and is 2-0 against his protégé with both as head coaches in the SEC West.
Alabama missed out on the four-team College Football Playoff last year for the first time in the CFP’s six-season existence, and the talent-stacked Crimson Tide seem primed to climb back into the postseason real estate the Aggies can only dream about to date.
“You know what they’ve done and who they are, and we have to go play ball,” Fisher said of trying to win on the road at Alabama. “We have to keep recruiting well and keep building on the process we have. We’ve had two great young recruiting classes (in 2019 and 2020) I’m very excited about, and we’ve got some very good young players, and our older players are developing.
“It’s always a measuring stick when you play Alabama as far as where you stand in the national scene because they’ve been on top of it for so long.”
If the Aggies are to spend time at the top at some point, Fisher will need to continue reeling in five-star prospects like receiver Demond Demas of Tomball. Demas did not play in the Aggies’ 17-12 edging of Vanderbilt in the season opener, however, prompting plenty of questions for Fisher afterward.
“We wanted to get him in there early,” he said. “We had a plan to get all (the freshmen) in there, but we didn’t have as many plays. … It became a very tight game, and there wasn’t a chance to break a new guy in for his first time. (Demas) is doing well and playing well.
“I’m very happy with all those guys. They’re going to be really good football players, and you’re going to see them in the future. We’ve just got to (have) the right situation to get them in there, and the opening game wasn’t the right time, in our opinion.”
If the Aggies are to stand a chance at Alabama, which won 38-19 at Missouri in its opener, senior quarterback Kellen Mond must have a much cleaner game than he did against the Commodores. Mond fumbled three times, losing two.
“As a quarterback, you can have 100 plays and you can play 97 of them perfect,” Fisher said. “There are two or three bad plays — because you touch the ball every time — that can affect the outcome of the game, no matter what the scenario is. You have to understand that, and you’ve got to be perfect as a quarterback.
“That’s just the way you’ve got to play, and that’s the way you’ve got to think.”
brent.zwerneman@chron.com
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