Alabama football has an absolutely massive game Saturday at Bryant-Denny Stadium against Tennessee. It’s a rematch of one of the two games the Crimson Tide lost last season, and a chance for UA to keep its title aspirations alive while entering its bye week 5-0 in SEC play.

The importance of the Third Saturday in October this year isn’t lost on Nick Saban. During his weekly radio show appearance Thursday, Saban implored fans to make the environment difficult for the Volunteers.

“It should be a big game for everybody,” Saban said. “Everybody’s on the team. All the fans, everybody. And the fans in this game, should have a huge impact on this game. I mean, you can have a huge impact with the noise that you make.”

Saban went into how the crowd in Tuscaloosa could impact Tennessee specifically.

“This team’s trying to go fast,” he said of the Volunteers. “They run 2.7 plays every minute in the game. So you can affect that and disrupt that by making noise. And it’s gonna create energy and environment that our players will play better in, they’ll be able to sustain their intensity better in, which is what we lost last week. Because it’s gonna take that kind of game for 60 minutes.”

Alabama and Tennessee are scheduled to kick off at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. The game will be aired on CBS.

Tennessee enters the contest at 5-1, 2-1 in the SEC.

“You create the momentum of the game by what you do as fans,” Saban said in his message to the Crimson Tide faithful. “Don’t worry about the players to do it. You create it for them. One time. One time I’m asking you to do that.”