Alabama football’s offensive performance on Saturday in a 34-24 loss to Texas. Jalen Milroe threw two interceptions, the run game struggled and offensive line penalties took two touchdowns off the scoreboard.

Before the Tide headed to Tampa to face South Florida on Saturday, head coach Nick Saban explained what went so wrong.

“It all comes down to your ability to execute, and we’ve had too many inconsistencies in execution,” Saban told reporters Wednesday.. “When you take drive-stoppers, we had six offensive penalties, those are drive-stoppers. Two of those penalties took points off the board. We got sacked five times. Sacks are drive-stoppers. Dropped balls are drive-stoppers. We only had one dropped ball. And turnovers are obviously drive-stoppers. The other team gets the ball and you don’t have it. So when you add all those up, you should be at a much more efficient percentage than we were Saturday night.”

Saban admitted after the game that the thought of pulling Milroe had crossed his mind. After the redshirt sophomore, who shared the SEC’s offensive player of the week award in the season opener against Middle Tennessee State, led the team on a scoring drive, the coach kept him on the field.

Milroe spent much of the game running for his life due to offensive line struggles and was sacked five times. On Wednesday, Saban was asked how he felt the quarterback dealt with blitzes.

“I think we only got sacked once on the blitz and the back cut the linebacker and he got up and still sacked the quarterback,” Saban said. “The other issues was really basically four-man rush, three-man rush. I think that he has done OK. I think what we need to do as an offense is everybody’s gotta pay more attention to detail. We can’t give bird and rabbits so the other team knows when we’re passing so they can tee off. All these little things sort of add up to create a disadvantage for you if you don’t get them fixed. These are all things that our players need to understand and need to do so we can protect better so the quarterback has a better chance to operate.”

Milroe was able to hit on long passes downfield against Texas. However, he struggled at medium length throws.

Saban acknowledged that area of Alabama’s game could have been better.

“We have made some explosive plays in our first two games,” Saban said. “We have not been consistent in what you refer to as the intermediate passing game, and making decisions to get the ball out of our hand quickly. Run routes so we can get open, and things are pretty decisive for the quarterback. (inaudible). Everybody needs to do a better job. Protection needs to be better, the pocket doesn’t need to be collapsing on a quarterback with a four-man rush. All those things need to get better. We’ll work on it.”

Alabama and South Florida are scheduled to kick off at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in Tampa. The game will be aired on ABC.

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