When you’re Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide, anything less than a national championship is viewed as a failure.
Despite making it to the 2021 title game, it was an uncharacteristic year for Saban and his team. There was that rare mid-season loss to Jimbo Fisher and Texas A&M. They had close-calls throughout the season with nail-biting wins against Florida, LSU, Arkansas and Auburn. Plus, they also let Tennessee hang around until the fourth quarter.
And in the end, it was the Georgia Bulldogs that dethroned the Tide in last year’s national title, winning 33-18 and sending Bama home as the runner-up.
During an appearance on McElroy and Cubelic In The Morning on Wednesday, Saban looked back on last season and referred to it as a rebuilding year.
“Last year,” Saban said, “we had kind of a rebuilding year.”
On Thursday, Paul Finebaum of the SEC Network discussed Saban’s comments, saying “it’s not a great look.”
“This is very predictable…Whenever he (Saban) loses a game, like a national championship game, here comes the excuse,” Finebaum said. “Here comes the Nick Saban grievance tour.
I mean sometimes I don’t know whether Nick Saban is trying to continue to be the greatest coach of all time, or he wants Jimmy Kimmel’s job.
I mean, I don’t really understand it because quite frankly at some point it’s not a great look.”
Finebaum went on to remember Saban’s past complaints after losing a game, or in the case of this offseason, losing some recruiting battles.
“But first it was NIL that he was complaining about over and over and now he’s quibbling about what happened last year,” Finebaum added.
“In the past, you could go back into the record book, every time he loses one of these games, he called the Sugar Bowl a couple years ago a consolation game. He blamed the NFL Draft on the loss to Ohio State when Ezekiel Elliott was there. There’s always something with Nick Saban, but we still love him, don’t we?”
In 2021, Saban had to replace 10 players who were taken in the NFL draft, eight of which were selected in the first two rounds including wide receivers DeVonta Smith and Jaylen Waddle plus quarterback Mac Jones.
Additionally, his offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian left for Texas and brought along offensive line coach Kyle Flood and special teams coordinator Jeff Banks.
But at the end of the day, is that any different from practically every other offseason for Saban and his staff? When you build a great program, players and coaches leave and you rebuild. Almost every year in college football is technically a rebuilding year.
All facts, keep crying Saban pic.twitter.com/47AbpOeP8J
— Barstool UGA National Champions🏆 (@ugabarstool) August 4, 2022
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