Second Scrimmage is in the Books with A-Day a Week Away

The Alabama football team held its second scrimmage of the spring on Saturday afternoon inside Bryant-Denny Stadium.

The scrimmage lasted roughly 140 plays and was just over two hours under sunny skies and temperatures in the upper-70s. The Crimson Tide will have Sunday and Monday off before returning for practices on Tuesday and Thursday before A-Day on Saturday, April 20.

“In this week’s scrimmage we wanted to focus on more game-like situations,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said on Sunday. “There were some really good things in the scrimmage, probably mostly offensively. I thought we did a really good job offensively. AJ (McCarron) had a really good day. We ran the ball effectively. I thought the offensive line played pretty well, and we had some receivers step up and make some plays and didn’t have a lot of dropped balls.”

Senior quarterback AJ McCarron led the offense with 319 yards while completing 82.1 percent of his passes (23 of 28) and tossing five touchdowns. T.J. Yeldon led the rushing attack with 101 yards and two scores on 14 carries, including a 65-yard burst up the middle early in Saturday’s scrimmage.

Redshirt freshman Chris Black and sophomore Amari Cooper both cracked the 100-yard mark receiving. Black, a Jacksonville, Fla., native led the way with 10 grabs for 113 yards. Cooper, from Miami, Fla., caught six balls for 108 yards and four touchdowns.

HaHa Clinton-Dix, Denzel Devall and Ryan Anderson all tallied six tackles to pace the Alabama defense while Vinnie Sunseri added five stops. Devall and Belue both recorded sacks and Sunseri broke up a pass.

“Defensively, we’ve got quite a few guys banged up, so we had a lot of new guys in a lot of places,” Saban said. “I don’t think we tackled real well, and I don’t think we played the kind of responsibility football that we need to, so we definitely have a lot of things that we can correct on that side of the ball.”