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See Nick Saban smile while criticizing Alabama football's first-half performance vs. TAMU

Erik Hall
The Tuscaloosa News

Alabama football head coach Nick Saban had a big smile on his face while talking to CBS reporter Jamie Erdahl entering halftime. 

Saban wasn't friendly with what he said about the way Alabama football played in the first half at Texas A&M. 

The TAMU Aggies led Alabama 24-10 at halftime. 

"We're not playing very well," Saban said when Erdahl asked about the Alabama defense. "We're not tackling very well. We're not staying in our gaps. They're doing a good job of blocking us. We haven't got off the field on third downs. We got to play a lot better. We got to do a lot better."

Erdahl asked Saban about not using timeouts at the end of the first half. 

"Well, what about it," Saban said. "I mean, they would have got the ball back if we had called them. We had all the timeouts. We would have started calling them once it got less than a minute. But we didn't even make it. We didn't even need the time that we had. So you don't call timeout until there is less than a minute. We had three timeouts, so we were going good. We just got a penalty on fourth down. We turned the ball over on the 2-yard line. We turned it over again. Lots of penalties. All these things contribute to not doing well." 

Alabama, ranked No. 1 in the USA Today Sports AFCA Coaches Poll, comes into the matchup 5-0 overall and 2-0 in the SEC. Most recently, Alabama beat Ole Miss 42-21 on Oct. 2. 

The Texas A&M Aggies enter the game 3-2 overall and 0-2 in the SEC. On Oct. 2, Mississippi State beat TAMU 26-22.

Entering Saturday, Alabama leads the all-time series 11-2 vs. Texas A&M. 

Here's more Alabama, TAMU football news:

Oct 9, 2021; College Station, Texas, USA; Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban leads the Crimson Tide players onto the field at Kyle Field to play Texas A&M. Mandatory Credit: Gary Cosby Jr.-USA TODAY Sports

Nick Saban is the Alabama Crimson Tide football head coach. Jimbo Fisher is the Texas A&M Aggies football head coach. 

Erik Hall is the lead digital producer for sports with the USA Today Network. You can find him on Twitter @HallErik.