Due to restrictions caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic, Alabama wasn’t able to hold its annual A-Day game on Saturday, depriving the public of its first opportunity to see the Crimson Tide this year. However, Nick Saban participated in a roughly 10-minute interview during Alabama’s spring update radio show where he was able to talk a little bit about this season’s team with broadcaster Eli Gold.

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Of the several topics that came up, one of the most interesting was the team’s two new additions to the strength and conditioning staff, David Rhea and Dr. Matt Rhea. Alabama brought the duo in from Indiana last month as a replacement for outgoing strength coach Scott Cochran. Saturday, Saban explained how Ballou and Rhea first came on his radar.

“Four or five years ago, these guys were at IMG when actually some of our fourth- and fifth-year players were at IMG and heard a lot about some of the state-of-the-art sports science stuff that they were actually into and doing there, just when you’d visit in recruiting or whatever,” Saban said. “I never really thought much about it, and then when we had this opportunity come up, we researched these guys and they’d done a phenomenal job at Notre Dame of eliminating injuries by something like 50 percent and even better at Indiana.

“So, when they came in and we interviewed them, there was no question that from a sports science standpoint and from a conditioning standpoint they were light-years in advance of what a lot of people have done in their programs for a long, long time, which we’ve done the same thing for a long, long time, too.”

Alabama has been hit with several serious injuries over the past few seasons. During last year’s fall camp, the Crimson Tide saw linebackers Dylan Moses and Joshua McMillon suffer season-ending knee injuries while running back Trey Sanders sustained a season-ending foot injury. During the season, the Crimson Tide lost defensive lineman LaBryan Ray to a season-ending foot injury in Week 3, while several other players suffered nagging injuries throughout the year.

Saban said Alabama brought in NFL professionals to examine where the team could improve in its injury prevention before hiring Ballou and Rhea. After interviewing the duo, the head coach was instantly blown away.

“We were already going down this path,” Saban said. “So then when these guys came on board, everybody else we interview was pretty much like a strength coach of the past, and these guys were really way advanced in terms of some of the things that they did to prevent injuries, some of the training programs that they had. Velocity training, explosive movements. Just really, really excited to have them here in the program. The players love them. They’ve done a phenomenal job in transition, and I think, longterm, this is going to be a real asset for us.”

Ballou served as Alabama’s director of sports performance, while Dr. Rhea is the director of performance science. Saturday, Saban explained a little bit of each assistant’s role.

“Dr. Rhea has an eight-point (program), whether it’s sleep, nutrition and six other things that contribute to your level of performance,” Saban said. “And he can actually show players on graphs by testing that if you’re 100 percent in all these areas and you sleep eight hours, you’re still going to be 100 percent. And if you’re 100 percent in all these areas and you sleep six hours, your performance is going to drop 20 percent.

“He can show players that if you do a vertical jump and a standing broad jump and one other lower-body test, I can get you to rehab yourself up to a certain level, you’re going to significantly reduce your chances of getting an ACL. So, these are the kinds of things that he does.”

Ballou’s job revolves more around implementing the program with the players. However, Saban said there have been changes in that process as well.

“Instead of these guys actually running drills, like when we were doing our offseason program, they actually observe drills and they make notes on what players need to do what to improve their performance. This is a completely different level of how you go about training high-performance players, and I think it’s something that we needed and certainly welcome.”

Alabama is not currently allowed to monitor workouts but has sent out workout guidelines to each of their players to do at their choosing.

While training can not be discussed, Alabama has been allowed four hours of video conferencing with players per week. Beginning Monday, the allowed time will double to eight hours per week through the end of May.

Saban said Alabama has been holding hour-long sessions with its players from Monday through Thursday, focusing primarily on organized install.

“We probably spend 55 minutes of that (time) on organized install,” Saban said. “We’ve been doing this now for 10 or 12 days, and we’re probably somewhere between Day 4 or Day 5 of what we’d do in spring practice because we can take everything really, really slow, show a lot of examples, teaching progression examples from practice and things like that. It’s really been good. The players have been really, really good.

“We actually had a team meeting on Zoom yesterday. I sit in a different team meeting every day so I can kind of see the different players at every position because you don’t see them every day. I think they look forward to it. I think it keeps them connected, and I think it gives them something to look forward to.

“We try to emphasize with the players, routine is something really important in something like this. When are you doing your schoolwork? When are you working out? When are you having your two o’clock everyday positional meeting? They’ve been good. It’s worked out as well as could be expected.”

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