Nick Saban Criticizes Alabama's Performance vs. Texas Despite Last-Second Win

Despite Alabama narrowly avoiding an upset loss to Texas on Saturday, Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban wasn't happy with how his team played, and he didn't hold back from criticizing the performance after the game.

"We had way too many penalties," Saban said, per ESPN's Alex Scarborough. "We shot ourselves in the foot quite a bit."

The Crimson Tide committed 15 penalties in Saturday's 20-19 victory, the most ever committed in a single game under Saban and one shy of the program record set in 2002. Alabama trailed by two with under two minutes left before star quarterback Bryce Young led the team down the field to set up the game-winning 33-yard field goal by Will Reichard with 10 seconds remaining.

Alabama's offensive line, in particular, had trouble dealing with the atmosphere at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, which had a record crowd of 105,213. Young was pressured 12 times and sacked twice.

"Well, we didn't block them very well up front, didn't protect very well, got pressure in the pocket," Saban said. "Wasn't very effective throwing the ball. Didn't get people open. Probably need to do a better job from a planning standpoint, the way they played us. So, um, you know it just all comes down to execution."

The Crimson Tide were able to keep their streak of 53 straight nonconference regular-season wins alive. Still, Saban felt his team was overwhelmed by distractions and it affected their play Saturday.

"When you're playing games like this, you have to focus on what's in front of you," he said. "You can't worry about all the other stuff that's going on--what people say, what they say on ESPN, what you all [the media] say, how much you're favored in the game. You have to focus on what's in front of you. ... So we didn't do any of that stuff the way we need to. So it wasn't just one thing."

Alabama will look to improve to 3-0 next week when it hosts Louisiana-Monroe.