By Justin Graves

TUSCALOOSA

It didn’t take long for Alabama fans to start pointing fingers after the Crimson Tide’s 17-12 loss to Mississippi State Saturday.

Just moments after the game ended, Alabama fans across the state starting venting through message boards and sports talk radio shows about the Crimson Tide’s play — or lack thereof — at quarterback.

And even though fans have now had two complete days to think about what happened in Starkville, Miss., they still aren’t quite ready to forgive junior quarterback John Parker Wilson yet.

In the loss, Wilson only completed 16 of 34 passes for 120 yards with two interceptions. At the same time, Mississippi State returned the two interceptions for 140 yards and a touchdown. He was also sacked for an 11-yard loss on the final play of the game.

Even though Wilson made more than one mistake Saturday, the one that still has Alabama fans reeling is the interception at the end of the first half. With Alabama in a third-and-goal situation in the final seconds of the first half, Wilson was pressured by defensive end Titus Brown and tried to throw the ball away.

But when the Tide quarterback didn’t get enough muscle behind the ball, it was intercepted and returned 100 yards for a touchdown that gave Mississippi State a 10-9 lead.

“The turnovers were critical,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said. “You can’t give it away. There have been times when (Wilson) has made good decisions, but there have been times when he hasn’t. There have been times when he should have thrown the ball away and didn’t. That’s something we have to fix.”

For Alabama fans, Wilson’s miscues on Saturday wouldn’t be as difficult to swallow if it was the first time they had occurred. But unfortunately for the Crimson Tide, it’s not.

Wilson possibly had one of his worst games of the season in Alabama’s 41-34 loss to LSU a week ago. In that game, the junior only completed 14 of 40 passes for 234 yards with one interception. He was also sacked seven times and lost a fumble.

With Wilson starting to struggle at quarterback, many people are starting to wonder where the junior signal-caller’s confidence level is. At the same time, people are also starting to wonder if Wilson’s teammates still have confidence in his ability to run Alabama’s offense.

During Nick Saban’s press conference Monday afternoon, the Alabama head coach was asked to assess the team’s confidence in its quarterback. And to say the least, Saban did everything but answer the question.

“Everybody has a job to do,” Saban said. “There have been some obvious mistakes made this season, and to not acknowledge that would be absurd. It’s like I’ve said before, our organization can’t tolerate bad judgment. There have been some very costly decisions made this season.”

So does that mean Wilson won’t be on the field Saturday? More than likely not.

In fact, Saban said he doesn’t plan on trying to get Alabama’s starters out of the game early Saturday when Louisiana-Monroe comes to Bryant-Denny Stadium. Instead, Saban is just worried about winning.

“I don’t know about all that stuff,” Saban said. “We’ve just got to win a football game. And that might not be easy with the way we’ve played lately. So no, I don’t plan on resting our starters Saturday because we’re going to need them to win a football game.”