Alabama is among the worst in the country in penalties per game through the first quarter of the season.
The Crimson Tide is averaging 9.33 penalties, tied for 121st out of 130 FBS programs. Alabama has been flagged 28 times.
“I think it’s a great issue,” coach Nick Saban said Wednesday. “When you get penalties, you put yourself behind in down and distance. When you get down on defense, you give the other team opportunities.”
That certainly happened when cornerback Josh Jobe was called for pass interference on the first play of the second half against Florida, and the Gators rolled down the field for a score to open the third quarter.
“There’s two kinds of penalties,” Saban said. “There’s lack of focus, lack of discipline penalties, whether it’s offsides, false starts, illegal formations. Those types of penalties you definitely want to clean up. Then there’s some penalties that are full speed, guys are playing, they get a penalty.”
Pass interference and holding penalties, which have combined for 13 of the 28 flags, would probably fall into the second category.
“They’re not acceptable, but (the second type) may happen a little more often,” Saban said. “But I think if you can eliminate the undisciplined penalties, you would probably eliminate at least half the penalties that we’ve had.”
Holding penalties lead the way with seven total, but more than half have come on special teams.
Four of the six false starts, which would fall in the first category, came against Florida. The crowd noise likely had an effect on that, with the fifth-largest turnout at The Swamp in its history.
“It can be hard sometimes just trying to hear,” guard Emil Ekiyor said. “We had some issues with that sometimes and communicating which type of cadence we were doing. Sometimes we were confused on whether we were going on the clap. We had started with the clap going into the game, but as the sound got louder, obviously couldn’t hear the clap. We went to a silent cadence later on in the game, so that was a little bit better.”
All penalties for Alabama through three games:
Holding: 7
Defensive pass interference: 6
False start: 6
Offsides: 3
Illegal block: 2
Intentional grounding: 1
Unsportsmanlike conduct: 1
Delay of game: 1
Ineligible man downfield: 1
View more on Mainline Media News