TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Alabama will field a new-look offensive line at Kyle Field on Saturday.

With starting center Chris Owens dealing with a knee injury, head coach Nick Saban confirmed Landon Dickerson will move to center from right guard and Deonte Brown will replace Dickerson at right guard in this weekend’s matchup between the No. 1 Crimson Tide and No. 24 Texas A&M.

“(Brown)’s going to play right guard, Landon will play center and everybody else is really the same,” Saban said Thursday night on The Nick Saban Show. “But you have to practice all the time with these internal guys alternating their positions. It’s the only way that you can get the best five players on the field when you do have something happen to a particular person. So, having Deonte back is really good, and he’s practiced and played pretty well.”

In his second game starting at center this season -- and ever -- Dickerson will be snapping to quarterback Tua Tagovailoa with the 12th Man reigning down on him in College Station, Texas. To prepare for the hostile environment the crowd of 102,733 can create, Alabama spent two days practicing with manufactured crowd noise. It usually only does that on Thursdays of game weeks.

“You want to do everything you can to not allow the noise to affect the game,” Saban said. “You’d like to see the players be able to stay focused in that little green patch that we’re going to play on that’s 53 yards wide and 100 yards deep that that kind of gets decided there by who can sort of impose their will and be able to stay focused and do what they have to do and not let the noise affect them. It’s difficult to do that in practice, but we’ve done it two days this week.

“And I think that Landon will do fine with it. I mean, Chris has done a good job for us, but Landon has played center before in some games, and he seems to be a bright guy, can make all the calls and we haven’t had much of an issue with it this week in practice.”

No. 1 Alabama will face No. 24 Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, on Saturday, Oct. 12.

Alabama offensive lineman Landon Dickerson

Saban’s philosophy on holders

Tagovailoa is on the receiving end of most of the Tide’s offensive snaps, as well as snaps from long snapper Thomas Fletcher on field goals and extra points. It’s a responsibility the starting quarterback doesn’t take lightly, but Alabama fans aren’t particularly fond of Tagovailoa doing it.

During his weekly call-in radio show at Baumhower’s Victory Grille in Tuscaloosa, Saban shared his philosophy on holders and also revealed that a couple of other players are training to hold.

“First of all, we want the guy that’s the best holder on our team to be the holder -- who has the best hands, who can get the ball down quickest and spin the ball so the kicker doesn’t kick the laces,” Saban said. “And when I was a player -- which I know nobody really cares about that old-fashioned stuff -- if you were the quarterback, you were the holder, that’s the way it was, aight. You learned how to do that when you were a kid, and that’s what you did.

“Well, it just happens to be that Tua’s really, really good at this. You know, AJ (McCarron) did it when he was here, too. Now, it does enhance your chances of being able to fake the ball because you someone athletic enough to run and you also have someone with the arm talent to throw passes, if you want to do that.

“Now, I do understand how this whole thing sort of transpired through the years that punters and other position players started to become the holder because they had the practice time that they could commit when the other folks were practicing 7-on-7 or team run or whatever it was. When the quarterback’s doing that, the punter’s over there holding for the kicker, so they could sort of get used to each other and all that. And I think as long as you have a punter that has really good hands, that’s good, and we’ve had guys do that here before that could do it.

“And we are training other people to do it. We’re training Mac (Jones) to do and Slade Bolden, who was a high school quarterback, he can do it. So, we’re not making Tua do it just because, and a little bit of it is up to the kicker. What is the kicker’s preference? When the kicker says, ‘I really like this guy as a holder,’ that enhances his confidence of being confident, so you want to listen to that.

“So, anyway, that’s kind of the history behind all that. And I don’t have a preference. I just want the best guy on our team holding. I mean, you certainly don’t want to muff a snap in a critical game and lose points over it because you didn’t have the best guy in there holding.”

Alabama quarterback Tua Tagovailoa

Even Saban jokes about PATS

Sticking with special teams, one caller prefers the NFL’s approach to extra points and wants to see some strategy put into the chip shots at the college level instead of them being automatic.

Saban provided a hilarious answer.

“I hate to say this, but our extra points haven’t been so automatic the last couple years,” Saban said with a chuckle. “I mean, I’m standing there on the sideline shaking my leg every time we line up, so moving it back to the 25-yard line, I’d really be having that anxiety that I tried to tell you that’s not good. I have some sometimes.

“But I do think that, from a competitive standpoint, it creates a little more interest because people wouldn’t 95 or 98 percent of whatever the kicks are that they make now from the 3-yard line. It probably would be a much bigger advantage to have a really, really good kicker.

The 13th-year head coach went on to say which NFL rule he would like to see in college football.

“After coaching eight years in the NFL, I always favored -- and I know people in the NCAA will hate me saying this, but -- I really like the overtime rules that we had in the NFL better than just putting the ball on the 25-yard line because you just keep playing the game,” Saban said. “Now they have a time limit on it. It used to be you just played until somebody won.

“… That’s not the question I got asked, but I always kind of liked it better because playing in the red zone, it can be a tremendous advantage to some teams if they have certain types of players. And you hear people going for two to win the game, which I think is fine. I’m not criticizing anybody for doing that, but they do it because they don’t have enough confidence in their defense or their defense is tired because they played so many plays, so they really affected the outcome of the game just because of the way the rules are.”

Contact Charlie Potter by 247Sports' personal messaging or on Twitter (@Charlie_Potter).