Nick Saban left no doubt about his thoughts on the Georgia-Alabama game during his appearance on College GameDay.<\/p>\n
Saban, speaking on the panel from within Coleman Coliseum \u2014 where the show was moved because of the threat of storms \u2014 was noticeably upbeat among the Crimson Tide fans in the arena.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Georgia has) dominated every team that they\u2019ve played,\u201d Saban said. \u201cThey haven\u2019t played anybody, but they will play somebody tonight, and the Tide will dominate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interestingly enough, Saban later said during the broadcast that while a head coach, he disliked his players watching College GameDay and hearing about their accolades with the expectation for victories..<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to hate it, Saban said. \u201c And everybody picks us to win and I know the players are watching that, and I\u2019m wondering if it will affect their psychological disposition \u2026 because you (GameDay panel) think they are going to win, and they have to go out and play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saban propped up Georgia during his Friday appearance on the Pat McAfee Show.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Georgia is one of the most complete teams in the country,\u201d Saban said. \u201cI know they haven\u2019t been tested, but they haven\u2019t been behind, they\u2019ve dominated the competition, which that\u2019s hard to do sometimes when you\u2019re supposed to win and you go out and win like you\u2019re supposed to, and they\u2019ve been able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saban said \u201cI know Kirby,\u201d and outlined the five things he believes the Georgia coach will emphasize for his defense:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Stop the run<\/p>\n
\u2022 Affect the quarterback <\/p>\n
\u2022 Don\u2019t allow explosive plays<\/p>\n
\u2022 Get off field on third downs<\/p>\n
\u2022 Create turnovers <\/p>\n
Saban\u2019s popularity is swelling of late, as ESPN ha started its six-part documentary on his career and life.<\/p>\n
It has somewhat overshadowed Smart becoming the winningest SEC coach in history by percentage, as the 11th-year Georgia coach has won 85.3% of his games while Saban sits second at 84.7% <\/p>\n
Georgia opened as a 1.5-point favorite, but the line quickly shifted in Alabama\u2019s favor, indicating the betting public preferred the Tide.<\/p>\n
The line had moved up to Alabama by 2.5 points in many sports books, likely because of the surprising news that Georgia touchdown-leader Chauncey Bowens is out for the game.<\/p>\n
Bowens suffered an apparent ankle injury in the first half of the Bulldogs\u2019 38-14 win over Vanderbilt on Saturday before returning to action in the second half.<\/p>\n
Georgia updated its injury report on Friday night to indicate that receiver Isiah Canion was downgraded from questionable to \u201cout.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a particularly disappointing announcement in light of the fact that Thomas Blackshear, Canion\u2019s primary backup, is also out after suffering a shoulder injury Saturday against Vanderbilt.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Saban left no doubt about his thoughts on the Georgia-Alabama game during his appearance on College GameDay.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":877811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[22386,5183,366367,399,681,398,396,397,7702,99],"class_list":["post-877810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-ajc-freelancer","tag-alabama","tag-bryant-denny-stadium","tag-football","tag-georgia","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sec","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}