"Alabama's taking it easy this week? NOT"

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Alabama is practicing every day this week. A lot of it will be getting back to fundamentals, fixing mistakes along with some advance work on upcoming opponents.

“I need to continue to work on my tackling, my tackling on the perimeter coming down, playing safety, in the SEC at that,” senior safety Jared Mayden said. “There’s a lot of big backs out there. I need to make sure I’m not just going up and hitting guys as hard as I can. I need to be able to hit and wrap up. Wrapping up is definitely something that’s on my focus.”

Here are five other points of emphasis for the Crimson Tide this week.

1] Recover

Alabama’s had a ridiculous number of injures this season, including some like junior wide receiver Henry Ruggs III (hip pointer) who could benefit from some extra rest.

“He’ll probably be sore for a few days, but we don’t think it’s an issue long-term,” Nick Saban said after Saturday’s 59-31 victory over Ole Miss.

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2] Work on ball control on offense

Scoring touchdowns is obviously always the goal, but doing so and also eating up some of the clock could certainly help the defense.

“There’s been games where he’s told us to drive, and there’s some drives where he wants us to go fast,” junior wide receiver DeVonta Smith said about balancing up-tempo and ball-control priorities.

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3] Set the offensive line

Deonte Brown returned last week and had significant playing time at both guard positions. Freshman Even Neal might have made the decision for coaches about who to play a little tougher as both he and Landon Dickerson had strong performances against the Rebels.

4] Continue to gel defensively

Alabama is playing with one returning starter on the defensive line and on one at linebacker. The secondary has more experience, but it has a pair of new starters too with Mayden and freshman Jordan Battle at the dime slot. Combined with two true freshmen at interior linebacker and true freshman D.J. Dale at nose tackle, and that’s a lot of people still figuring out how to play together as a unit.

“You want everybody to reset and focus on the next play,” Mayden said ...

5] Get off the field, especially on third downs

Similar to what happened at South Carolina, Alabama’s defense was on the field for 88 plays against Ole Miss. It has to do better or the defense will tire down the stretch.

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