From afar, Alabama football cornerback Kool-Aid McKinstry’s punt return judgment hasn’t looked great this season. McKinstry, who has been one of the SEC’s better returners throughout his career, has seemed to make some poor choices as to which balls to field and which to let roll.

That happened again Saturday. McKinstry appeared to misjudge two kicks, one of which rolled to the Alabama three-yard line.

During the SEC coaches teleconference on Wednesday, Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban defended McKinstry.

“I think that a lot of people are kicking the ball away from him because we had a lot of success on punt return last year,” Saban said. “So he’s had a lot of difficult balls to field, in other words they’re not just kicking the ball to him most of the time.”

Saban explained what happened on the kick that pinned Alabama so deep in its own territory. He said the issue was in part due to the style that Tennessee punter Jackson Ross uses.

“There were two balls in the game, one he could have caught, probably would have been a tough catch,” Saban said. “And the last one, which went to the one-yard line, which was significant, he really misjudged the ball. These guys that are rugby punters, the ball doesn’t travel exactly like a normal punt, so this ball flew on him a little bit.

“You can see on the film when you watch it that the ball was going to go over his head and he was going to have to catch it outside his body and make a touch catch and rather than take a chance on doing that, he let the ball go and unfortunately for us, it rolled to the one-yard line.”

Last season, McKinstry averaged 15.8 yards per punt return. This year, that number is down to 5.3.

Still, Saban said he’s sticking with the junior.

“I got a lot of confidence in him,” Saban said. “I think he has confidence in doing it. I don’t think he has an issue. He wants to be back there, he wants to be aggressive, he wants to do what he has to do to be able to return punts and we’ve got total confidence in him.”