Nick Saban explains lost-down mishap in Alabama football’s Ole Miss win

In the third quarter of Alabama football’s Saturday win against Ole Miss, Nick Saban was angry. The head coach of the Crimson Tide was giving referees an earful after it appeared his team might have been shorted a down.

“I got hot about that one,” Saban said after the game, before launching into an explanation of what happened.

The Crimson Tide, down 7-6, were driving the ball into Ole Miss territory. At the Rebel 16, facing second-and-five, Roydell Williams carried the ball exactly five yards.

Then it got weird. The officials were slow to move the sticks, so Alabama, thinking it was third-and-short, ran a quarterback sneak with Jalen Milroe, who was tackled at the Ole Miss 10.

“Most of the time, the guy that marks the ball will signal first down,” Saban said. “He came and marked the ball and when they put their hand down, it’s like it’s short. So We assumed it was short.”

“So it’s bad on our part, if we weren’t trying to go fast we would have been able to recover the situation and that cost us really. We ended up kicking the field goal.”