Saban Press Conference

by BamaReturns07 on Jul 31, 2008 1:33 PM CDT Comment 7 comments

* Prince Hall will play, but suspended first three games

* Jerrel Harris will be the only freshman playing OLB, the rest will be ILB

* McElwain will be the sole play caller this season

* Kerry Murphy hopes to join the team in January, will not play in fall

* Will Oakley out for stress fracture on foot. Will not be reporting with the team. How long?

I probably missed a couple of points, but these are the highlights I remember.

ED by Todd: I'll just add this one point in here instead of doing a separate post:

True freshman running back Jermaine Preyear of Davidson High School will grayshirt this season due to a pre-existing shoulder injury.

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A few thoughts...

First off, thanks for getting this up because I couldn’t be near a computer when all of this starting to break. Anyway, here are a few thoughts:

The news on Hall is somewhat expected, but nevertheless good to hear. This will mean he will be back for the road trip to Fayetteville for the SEC opener, and that’s a positive addition to the team. I’m not sure he will start then, and frankly one of the young guys may have his position locked up by the time he returns, but at the very least he can give us some quality depth and experience at a position severely lacking in both.

Jerrell Harris being on the outside is fairly big news. A lot of people had mentioned the possibility of him playing inside, but given what Saban said I expect he and Chavis Williams will battle it out for the OLB job that belonged to Zeke Knight a year ago.

I find Saban’s choice of words interesting with Murphy, saying that he “should” be in come January. That’s interesting, because with most academically borderline guys coaches, in particular Saban, don’t tend to use such strong words. Perhaps he really is going the Jerrell Powe route, taking courses at UA this Fall in hopes of being cleared this Spring. We’ll see, I guess.

Oakley is just SOL, end of story. He probably won’t quit or transfer - and it’s not like we need him to since we’re under the 85 as is - but he’s not going to be seeing any meaningful playing time. He was probably, at best, fifth on the depth chart at WR coming out of the Spring, and now, with him coming in a week before we play Clemson, he’s going to be so far behind that he could never possibly catch up. I’d be shocked to see him get anything more than mop-up duty.

We still don’t know about Preyear just yet because we don’t know if he is counting as enrolling in this class or next. Even if he is a greyshirt and doesn’t enroll until January, he can still back-count to the 2008 class if he wants. We’ll just have to wait and see. His shoulder issue does worry me, though. That really limited him in high school, and its obviously still an issue. Hopefully it’s not a very serious issue, but it sounds like it. Hopefully the UA medical staff can get him healed up.

by outsidethesidelines on Jul 31, 2008 3:57 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

no problem. I am at work

and couldn’t get a ton of detail, but thought I would throw the highlights out there until you came in with more information, which I was expecting and anticipating :)

Roll Tide, Bitches!!!

by BamaReturns07 on Jul 31, 2008 5:12 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

How much of a potential impact can Hall make for the LBs once he’s allowed to play? Or do you think that some of the current players and incoming freshmen will have playe solidly enough that Hall will just be a back-up/depth person?

by CaliforniaTide on Jul 31, 2008 6:11 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Serviceable...

Well, we know Hall is going to play WLB alongside McClain, and at that spot he is going to have competition from, mainly, Cory Reamer and true freshman Donta’ Hightower.

I think at the end of the day it will hinge mainly on how Hightower looks. It has been rumored in a variety of circles that Lance Thompson has said in various speaking engagements that Hightower is as far along now as Rolando McClain was at this time a year ago, and while I don’t know if that’s true or not, Hightower does have the sheer size and athleticism for that to be a legitimate possibility.

If Hightower can step in ASAP and take this starting job, then yes I do think Hall will mainly return as a backup. If he is slow to come along, however, I think you’ll see Hall play a lot. Reamer is a converted safety who is always going to be a bit small, and while I do think he can be a valuable asset on passing downs, he’ll probably be a liability when it comes time to run the football. With that said, if you have a split between Reamer and Hall, that could work pretty well and result in a good number of snaps for both. Hall struggles in pass coverage, so if you put the two together where Reamer is mainly in on passing downs and Hall is mainly in on running downs, I think you could get solid production.

Again, I’m not really sure that Hall is going to start, and to be quite frank the odds might be against it barring injury. However, we are so short on linebackers at this point we can legitimately use anyone we can get. Hall is by no means a great player - in all fairness, he’s probably a slightly above average linebacker at best - but he is decent and serviceable, and with our depth situation, we really need him. Even if he only contributes 15-20 snaps per game, that would be a very big help for us.

It’s hard to say exactly how things will play out, but at the end of the day you have to feel a lot better about our situation at linebacker with Hall than you do without him.

by outsidethesidelines on Jul 31, 2008 6:44 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Question about Murphy...

With what you said about Murphy in response to what Saban said, does this mean that he’s on campus right now and hopes to have the grades to play in the spring?

by CaliforniaTide on Jul 31, 2008 4:08 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

I think...

We don’t have any official confirmation, but I think he just might be.

We do know that he is no longer at Hargrave, that’s a fact. However, he is somewhere trying to get academically eligible, and to date we have seen no reports of him enrolling in a junior college, and to be quite frank that shouldn’t even be a possibility because if he did enroll there he wouldn’t be eligible until he got his associate’s degree, so that’s two years away. By process of elimination, I think there’s a great chance he is at UA right now in some capacity.

by outsidethesidelines on Jul 31, 2008 4:46 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Maybe I was reading too much into it.....

Was I the only one somewhat impressed with Cory Reamer at the A-day game. I realize that it was a spring game, but it is what it is. I always seem to pull for the little guy that plays hard and Reamer seem to fit that bill. I’m sure that Hightower will do a fine job and we know what Hall is capable of, I just hope to see Reamer step up and I believe that he will.

by jtCRIMSON on Aug 1, 2008 9:50 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs