Saturday seemed to go as well as the No. 1-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide could have hoped, but one player thinks they still have a lot to improve on.
After the Tide rolled to a 56-14 victory over Louisiana-Lafayette, sophomore safety Xavier McKinney spoke somewhat critically about the team’s play.
“I thought it was OK,” he said of Bama’s defense, per Michael Casagrande of AL.com. “They moved the ball a lot on us and I feel like that’s unacceptable for us and we know that … Honestly we don’t think we’re really playing to the standard we think we should be playing at. There’s still a lot of things we feel like we’re not really dominating the way we feel like we should be dominating.
“I don’t think we’re a great defense right now, but I think we’re working towards that,” McKinney continued. “I don’t think it’s close. As a defensive unit, I don’t think it’s close. Like I said, we’re working to it. I think we’re getting better each week. But I don’t think it’s a perfect game. Nowhere near a perfect game.”
The Tide held ULL to under 300 yards of total offense and forced seven punts on the afternoon. On the season, they have now allowed just 13.0 points per game through their first five contests, which have all been victories by 20 points or more. McKinney clearly feels that they can do better though, and that is a very similar mindset to the one that his head coach has.
