Don’t Ask Nick Saban About Returning to a Ball Control Offense

Alabama head coach Nick Saban was already in mid-season form Tuesday as the Tide opened spring practice.
A reporter asked Saban if they would go back to being a ball-control offense, since the Tide defense was on the field for
99 plays in their national title game loss to Clemson.
Apparently that question struck a nerve with Coach Saban.
Said Saban:”Go to ball control. That’s not what we do. I mean the New England Patriots threw the ball over 60 something percent of the time, which is more than we threw it. So where does that assumption come from? Or do you do what everybody else in the media does, just create some (stuff) and just throw it on the wall and see what sticks, which is what I see happening everywhere. We’re going to be more conservative now on ball control offense. Where did that come from? I never said that. Nobody in this building ever said that, so where did you come up with that? Just had a dream about it or what? If we’d caught some passes in the national championship game, we had guys open, and we wouldn’t have had to control the ball. We would have scored more touchdowns.”