Alabama football’s offensive line struggled mightily in a 17-3 win over South Florida on Saturday. The Crimson Tide gave up five sacks and seemed to have no answer for the American Athletic Conference team’s pass rush.

On Monday, head coach Nick Saban said the group needed to improve across the board.

“They ran a lot of blitzes, a lot of looks, really only one thing that they did that we’ve not worked on,” Saban said. “But I think the players were not communicating well and not on the same page sometimes and I think that created issues and problems.”

It was the second game in a row the Crimson Tide allowed five sacks, following a 34-24 loss to Texas. In that game, Saban said the Longhorns weren’t even blitzing much, UA was simply getting beat on three and four-man rushes.

Against USF, Saban gathered the offensive linemen before the Tide’s final offensive possession. His message: run out the clock and win the game.

That happened. Alabama bullied USF, starting with 6:29 left on its own 20 and ending with 33 seconds remaining when Ty Simpson pushed into the end zone on a QB sneak to seal the victory.

“I thought that the offensive line played like our offensive line needs to play in the last 6:29 of the game, and that’s something that we wanna build on,” Saban said.

The players agreed.

“It was definitely important,” offensive tackle JC Latham said Monday when asked about the significance of that drive. “It showed a lot of potential that we have. It showed us what we can do when we all play as one, play in unison. It definitely, like I said, just gave use everything that we needed to know about our group and how we can finish. I know we got that in us.”

Alabama will be back in action Saturday, facing Ole Miss at Bryant-Denny Stadium in its SEC opener. The game is set to kick off at 2:30 p.m. and will be aired on CBS.

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