Moorhead praises Saban, Alabama ahead of meeting
During his Monday press conferences, Mississippi State coach Joe Moorhead usually opens with an overview of the upcoming opponent and gives a brief background on its coach and key players.
This week however, it wasn’t really necessary with the 18th-ranked Bulldogs set to play the defending national champions and current No. 1 team in Alabama on Saturday.
“I don’t think there’s enough time in the press conference or ink in the printer to go through all of (Nick Saban’s) superlatives,” Moorhead said. “Obviously he’s the best coach in college football right now and arguably one of the best of all-time.”
What Saban has done 83 miles to the east of Starkville down Highway 82 is a model that Moorhead is attempting to lay the groundwork to build his program towards in his first season.
“We talk all the time here in our building with our kids about the term ‘championship standard’,” Moorhead said.
“Quite frankly, this is what we’re chasing. Alabama is the gold standard in this league. I told our team that ‘no one falls to the top of the mountain’. Those guys have worked their tails off and have earned the right to be there and it’s our job to try to go up there and knock them off.”
A win on Saturday would send shock waves throughout the college football landscape and would be monumental for Moorhead as a rookie head coach in the Southeastern Conference.
Moorhead is cognizant of the near-perfect game plan and execution thereof that it will take to pull the upset over an undefeated Crimson Tide team that is averaging 565.6 yards and 51.3 points per game.
“We’re not going to crank it up this week just because it’s Alabama,” Moorhead said. “But we do have to have a heightened awareness coming into the game that the margin of error is almost negligible.”
