For the first time in a long time, the Alabama Crimson Tide looked vulnerable, even in a win.
We are now six days removed from a very narrow two-point win against the Florida Gators last Saturday, and during Saban’s weekly radio show on Thursday night he chose not to mince words when describing the performance.
“You’re playing on the road and then the energy and the enthusiasm of the other team starts kicking in, and then your players start getting a little bit frustrated and affects their decision-making and ability to be responsible and do their job,” Saban explained. “Then you start making mistakes, and the result of that is you become pretty ordinary pretty quick.”
“I probably wasn’t as pleased as what I would like to be,” he said. “Sometimes you win the game but you don’t really beat the other team was what I kind of told our players.”
Saban remarked that the team became “ordinary” shortly after securing a 21-3 lead during the first 20 minutes of the game.
He took a portion of the show to speak on the Alabama standard that has been built and preserved over a lengthy span of 14 years, saying that the standard must continue to be maintained.
“Every team has to buy into that culture,” he said. “That’s one of the things that I’m really trying to get this team to really buy into. I don’t want the other team to say, ‘Hey, we were the more physical team. Hey, we were the tougher team. They didn’t really beat us.’
“That’s not how it’s been. And that’s not how we want it to be. But we have to mature our way into that, learning lessons like we learned in Florida. Hopefully we’ll see how we respond and grow from those things.”
Saban also reminded us that there is a lack of upperclassmen on the team, saying that he does “not think people realize just how young our team really is,” adding that there are only two seniors in his 10-player leadership group.
“We have a very young team, and I think your team sort of grows in stages of development,” he said.
In many ways, the youth on the squad is a good thing. The experience they’ll gather this season will no doubt create an advantage as they age. On the flip side, inexperience and youth threatens the integrity of the season when the ultimate goal is yet another national championship.
Saban was also told about Jacksonville Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer’s comments comparing an NFL schedule to playing the Crimson Tide each week.
“Your character is much easier to keep than it is to give away and try to get back,” he said. “I’m talking about the tradition that we have here. The things, the culture we’ve created in terms of being a team that is well-respected and maybe even in some ways feared because of the way they compete, the toughness they play with, the intensity they play with and how they can finish. When you play in the league, you want the other teams in your league having that thought about you. Well, you’ve got to keep that. You can’t give it away.”
It’s clear that Saban wants his student-athletes to know that the perceived fear of Alabama could lapse if the fear itself is no longer justified by tough, intense play.
We should look at the game against Southern Miss on Saturday to see if the Crimson Tide have been able to fix some of the lingering issues still plaguing the team after three weeks.
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