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CAPITAL ONE ORANGE BOWL: ALABAMA VS OKLAHOMA

December 26, 2018

Michael Locksley

Miami Gardens, Florida

MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: When I made the decision to come work for Coach Saban as an analyst in 2016, the reason I came here was to get behind the wall, to see why Alabama has been able to sustain the winning and the way they do things, and I've not left, but I've had the opportunity now to see how it looks, how it should be done, how it should be practiced, all the philosophies behind what Coach calls the process, and it's been a great experience for me as a coach and it's added to my toolbox.

Q. How much of being associated with it just (indiscernible)?
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: Well, I would hope that I get better as a coach each year. Just like you as a reporter, I'm sure you get better as a reporter going through the experiences that you go through. I think anybody that comes in touch with the Alabama program and having the opportunity to work for Coach Saban, you can't help but get better. When you're around this guy and you get to see the work ethic, you get to see the organization, you get to see the structure, the discipline, how he goes about doing things, it rubs off not just on players but coaches, as well.

Q. Alabama is more of a philosophy/culture aspect of coaching --
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: It's a little bit of everything, obviously the philosophy part of how to build a team, how to develop a culture, but I've also had the opportunity to see what good defense looks like on the other side of the ball. As I said in August when I did the press conference there, this is Alabama's offense. What you do as a play caller is you put your personality on it. We run some of the same things that we ran under Lane, that we ran under Brian Daboll. I've been able to add some things to it, and that's what's developed the Alabama system. But you learn from a philosophical standpoint a lot of things from Coach but also just the football aspect. The guy, he is a big-time coach.

Q. Is he hard to work for? And I don't mean that in a negative stance, but is he difficult to --
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: Not at all. If you do your job and you're prepared and your players come out and they're prepared, I think the big challenge is making sure that you dot your I's and cross your T's. You've got to make sure that you cover every single aspect of it, but a lot of it is already set because it's just how we practice, it's how he prepares, it's his weekly schedule, our weekly regimen doesn't usually allow a lot of surprises.

Q. You talked about trying to get the ball to all the different guys that you have. Is there a challenge in doing that?
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: It's easy when you have a lot of really good players. The challenging part is trying to make those guys understand that the ball is going to be spread around. Damien has been one of the most unselfish guys. He's a guy that has had the opportunity to break the all-time rushing record here at Alabama but because of how the offense has kind of been molded this year, he may not have some of the individual statistics that he would like, but again, it's opened up the door for us to be really good on offense and that people have to defend every aspect of the system.

Q. You're going to be without one of your best run blockers in Deonte Brown in this game. How comfortable are you --
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: Lester is a three-year starter. The guy started three years for us. Obviously Deonte played really well for us coming into this season, but we have a lot of confidence in Lester, all the games that he started around here. We're fortunate to be able to have that type of depth to where when you lose a guy like Deonte, you have a three-year starter like Lester Cotton there ready to go. Tremendous confidence that Lester will come in and do his job.

Q. When you're going against an offense in Oklahoma that scores so fast, do you kind of want to have those long drives, and is that something you consider as a --
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: I think any time we want to control the tempo, and people misconstrue controlling the tempo with playing slow or running the football, but for us controlling the tempo is being efficient on first and second down, which allows you to sustain drives. For us we've been really fortunate there have been some first and second downs where we throw a five-yard slant and it goes 60 yards. That's still being efficient, and we're not going to apologize for scoring fast, but in the grand scheme of things, the goal is to be efficient on first and second downs, keeping it manageable on third downs and being able to move the ball.

Q. Was Damien completely unselfish or is that a conversation you had to have with him?
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: No, every guy on offense has put their egos aside for the betterment of the unit, and that's the thing I've been most excited and proud about. Because on any given day, a guy like Jerry Jeudy wins the Biletnikoff Award and he'll probably be the first to tell you if he didn't have Smitty and Ruggs on the other side of him that he may not have been given that opportunity. But having so many different playmakers on the field at once, it's hard to defend all those guys.

Q. (Indiscernible).
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: I haven't signed Butch up to a contract just yet, so tough question.

Q. The relationship that you've established with him, how strong is that?
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: I've established relationships -- our offensive staff is a really tight-knit group from Dan Enos to Josh Gattis to Brent Key, Joe Pannunzio, Jeff Banks -- all those guys have played an integral part in our system, how it's been developed, how it's been coached. Obviously Butch has a role with us, a role that I actually did a couple of years ago as an analyst to where he brings another perspective, a different view, a big picture view, and that's helped me tremendously.

Q. (Indiscernible).
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: Well, they align with Coach Saban's. That's the most important thing here at Alabama. I think, like I said, Butch's big picture thoughts, how he sees things, have been very good for me as a play caller because he gives you another set of eyes, much like when I was in an analyst role, you kind of have an opportunity to see things outside of a coaching position.

Q. How important is it for you to have a former head coach on staff? Is that something you think about when you try to put together all the pieces?
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: Yeah, being able to have guys that have sat in that chair before -- obviously I had a cup of coffee there in that chair there at New Mexico, but having guys like Butch, if he were to come on board or any of these guys that have had head coaching experience, I think when you're bouncing around thoughts, bouncing around ideas, that it's good to have somebody that's had the opportunity to be in that position and to help you maybe make the right choices.

Q. As you're putting your stamp (indiscernible), what's that communication like with him, working with him?
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: Well, I think the big thing is, as you guys know, Coach is not big into distractions and all of our conversations for the most part have been about Oklahoma preparation. He hasn't talked to me about the staff, he hasn't come to me and asked me what I'm doing, who I'm hiring. Most of it has been basically getting ready for this game.

Q. Is there somebody that you've tapped at Maryland to kind of run things while you're here?
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: We have a few people down that we've been able to get into place, some off-the-field positions, my director of football operations Roy Richards has kind of been the point man, but obviously with the Christmas break falling with the way it's come on this year, everything is pretty much dead right now, so there's really not a lot of things to do other than maybe some recruiting stuff, which we're very limited in what we can do there.

Q. How difficult of an early signing period was that to manage?
MICHAEL LOCKSLEY: I mean, as I said before, probably the best recruiting job I did was recruiting the current team at Maryland in terms of making sure before I left I was able to get in front of just about every player offensively, defensively, special teams, to make sure that they understood, to try to create some -- to stabilize basically the program. We had some guys that had put their names in a portal. We had some guys that maybe had anxiety of a new coach coming in. I felt like we were able to stabilize the program there. I wasn't going to let the December 19th date force me to make decisions or rush me to make decisions. That was kind of my approach.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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