It was another busy week in Tuscaloosa with Alabama planning for the homecoming game against Arkansas with a backup starting at quarterback.
With all that as a backdrop, we spoke to a number of Crimson Tide players this week and not everything made it into a story.
So, to fill in those gaps, we bring you some of the more interesting things Alabama players said that ended up on the cutting room floor.
— Terrell Lewis has been a star in the interview room this year, often bringing along football he calls his “baby” to cradle while talking. He also had a few one liners in recent meetings with the press, like Saturday night when asked about different formations he’s seen from Alabama offenses. “You ask me too much information,” he said with a suspicious look before being interrupted by former Tide linebacker Christian Miller.
— There’s history there since Lewis stood at Miller’s side in the same postgame room last year as his water butler while sitting out with an ACL tear. Miller, now a Carolina Panther, was in town and returned the favor and cracked up Lewis on Saturday night. See the video above for that.
— Back to Monday, Lewis was asked about leading the SEC in sacks at this point of the season. It was cool, “but you’re not gonna be remembered as, ‘Oh, he was leading in sacks after Week Seven.’” Good point.
— The punts of Ty Perine also made waves and Lewis was asked if they lift the defense. “Yeah,” he said without hesitating, “but then again you don’t want to take as if, ‘Oh we have a bunch of first downs to give up either.'”
— Receiver Henry Ruggs was on punt coverage and said he was “definitely” surprised by how far Perine’s punts traveled. “Definitely, I definitely was,” he said. “You got the reaction from the crowd as soon as the ball was in the air, so I knew it was a good kick, but I definitely didn’t think it was going that far.”
— The Bryant-Denny Stadium lights were also the topic of conversation with a few players. “It felt like a movie,” Lewis said. “I was telling guys, I told Anfernee (Jennings), they’re going to start having a concert at halftime.”
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— Ruggs also reacted to the new glow of the stadium. “At first it was just a casual warm up but when the team first came out, that’s when we finally got the first real glimpse of it,” he said. “That just gave everybody a little boost, everybody got to jumping around because that was the first time seeing them, first night game. It just brought more energy.”
— Said left tackle Alex Leatherwood: “I mean, Tennessee being a rivalry game, that’s always a good motivation to pump you up and stuff like that,” he said. “So, I feel like just that and it also being our first night game and you know the cool new lights and stuff like that. I feel like the whole team was really pumped up about it and had a lot of juice for that game.”
— On the topic of catching Mac Jones’ right-handed passes compared to Tua Tagovailoa’s lefty throws: “The spin on the ball is probably a little different,” Ruggs said, “but like I said, we practice with all quarterbacks, we throw with all quarterbacks, so we know what all their balls are like.”
— And what about the new blindside? Any pressure shifting from right tackle to the left side with a righty like Jones? “No, not really,” Leatherwood said. “I mean, you still have the same expectations and duties as the right tackle or the left tackle, no matter what side you play on.”
— The Wildcat formation also came up with Miller Forristall, the tight end who caught the first pass from a non-QB in that look since 2010. You might remember Forristall was a high school quarterback before a young underclassman named Trevor Lawrence came along. “I wasn’t great or good enough, obviously,” Forristall said of his passing skills. “Here and there, I’d like to think I can throw it a little.”
— Forristall set the edge on a touchdown run against Tennessee. He was asked about the blocking aspect of his job.
“It’s always going to be a pad level, hat placement, hands, especially for me, whether it be coming off the ball,” he said. “I’m not as big as some of these D-linemen that we play, I’m not 300 pounds. So, I have to play super aggressive at the point of attack and play low. And when I play high, bad things happen. When I play low, good things happen. And that’s something we continue to work on, whether it be like blocking guys like Terrell (Lewis) or Anfernee (Jennings) or Raekwon (Davis) or any of these guys, that kind of helps me in practice. If I have a good week of good-on-good, I usually block well. If I have a bad week of good-on-good, I don’t block as well.”
— Senior safety Jared Mayden is a newcomer to the interview circuit and he had a strong performance. He got especially animated when talking about special teams players like Ale Kaho and Perine. “Man, Kaho, that boy a headhunter like he do not care,” Mayden said. “That’s one person, like, a lot of people in football who don’t … when you play football, you kind of have to be like you don’t really care. You have to be ready to throw your body around. But Kaho … Kaho is special. He’ll go and blow up the shield every chance he gets. That’s something special. Not a lot of people can do that. And it’s not like he’s the biggest. He’s just, you can’t say he’s not giving a 110 percent effort. I mean he brings a real spark to the special teams unit and even the defense.”
— We also asked Leatherwood about the wheels he saw on freshman guard Evan Neal after Tagovailoa’s interception. “I was very impressed with him,” Leatherwood said. “To be that big and to move that fast, that speed is very impressive. That was cool to see.”
— Senior cornerback Trevon Diggs had a big play with the 100-yard fumble return, but he said conversations with NFL star big brother Stefon Digs aren’t usually about things like that. “We kind of like talk about the things we do wrong,” Diggs said. “So, we didn’t really talk about the play, it was a good play, but I feel like I left plays on the field. That’s the kind of things we talk about. We look at each other’s games and say he drops a pass or something. We talk about things like that, we try and not talk about good things.”
— Being homecoming week, Diggs was asked if he’d ever met the Big Al mascot. “No, I haven’t,” he said. “That’s something I haven’t done since I’ve been here. I haven’t met him yet.” In case you were curious, now you know.
Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.
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