🏈 Friday conversation with Nick Saban, Part I

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TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – He has the No. 1-ranked football team in the land at a place where they live, breathe and sleep football.

They’re erecting a statue of him just outside the stadium, and his team has won 18 straight games, including the school’s first national championship in 17 years last season.

Bear Bryant is and always will be a deity in this state, and while Nick Saban has never seemed fazed about coaching in that revered shadow, the reality is that it’s a shadow that lessens with each Alabama win.

They started lining up for Saban's weekly coaches’ radio show at Buffalo Wild Wings on McFarland Boulevard at 7:30 a.m. on Thursday. There were some 20 people there by then, just hoping to get a table near the stage where Saban sits for his show every Thursday at 7 p.m.

Three guys actually camped out at Buffalo Wild Wings this week to be sure they had their pick of prime seats, and some fans have been known to drive from hours away.

Saban mingles with the fans during breaks, taking pictures and signing autographs. One guy had him sign his prosthetic leg last week.

It’s really the first time all week that Saban comes up for air during game week.

And this is not just any week.

It’s Florida week. The Gators are the last SEC team to beat the Crimson Tide, in the 2008 SEC championship game. It’s a loss that drove Saban, who’s already percolating with intensity, that much harder.

He sat down Thursday for a Q&A, discussing everything from the state of his program, to the Tide's inexperience on defense,*to the big showdown with the Gators on Saturday.

Here's Part I:

You knew there were going to be growing pains with so many first-year starters on defense. Do you think you’ve come through most of those growing pains, especially given the comeback last week in the 24-20 win at Arkansas?

Nick Saban: We’re capable of playing better. We’ve made too many mental errors, which is to be expected. It’s the way young guys learn. Last week, when we got tested a little bit, we were a little intimidated in the first half or maybe anxious is a better word and made a lot of mistakes. The players see that if we’d just done this stuff the way we’re supposed to do it, this wouldn’t have happened. That’s part of believing that, ‘if I do my job right, I’ve got the best chance to be successful.’ Sometimes when that happens, they go rat trap a little bit, which is what young players tend to do. Hopefully, with every game, we’ll continue to grow a little bit.

How much has your patience been tested with some of the mistakes and so many younger players on the field defensively?

Saban: I knew this was the way it was going to be. I knew it was going to be a process where these young guys would have to come along. I was hoping that the three guys, Mark (Barron), Dont’a (Hightower) and Marcell (Dareus) would provide the kind of example and help elevate everybody else’s game. Marcell missed a couple of games. Mark’s been pretty solid. Dont’a’s been pretty solid. We need those guys to continue taking ownership in that role. I always say the good players have to set the example for the younger guys, so they can elevate them to a certain standard. We need to continue to get that part of it, too.

Even with some of the warts, you still haven’t given up a touchdown in the second half.

Saban: Yeah, but I don’t ever look at the result. I look at what did we do right. And then you turn around and say, ‘OK, what did we do right? Here’s what happens when we do it right, and here’s what happens when we don’t do it right.' You just keep trying to get that built into their head that they buy into that kind of chemistry on defense.

How valuable was being able to pull out that game last week on the road when you didn’t play your best football in the first*half?

Saban: Needless to say, I was disappointed in the way we played in the first half. It was a tough atmosphere. They have a good team, and we were not ready for a team to try and knock us out in the first round. We rope-a-doped a little bit in the game and didn’t bring our ‘A’ game in the beginning and dug a hole for ourselves. On the other side of that, there’s probably not a whole lot of teams in that environment and that situation that could come back and do what our team did. So, there’s two sides to it.

What was your message to your team coming out of that game?

Saban: What I said to the players is that I hope you can learn what happens when you don’t have the right kind of mental energy and intensity and see how you perform and see what happens and then turn around in the same game and have it and see how you perform and how you play. Intensity to an athlete is like water to a human being. You can’t survive without it.

Have you simplified things on defense and how much?

Saban: Yes, we’ve tried to. But the first two plays of the game (against Arkansas), they go 70-something yards for a touchdown. We were in the most basic calls you can make. If you asked, ‘OK, what did you put in the first day of practice?’ That’s what we were in, the stuff we put in the first day of spring practice and the first day of practice, and we still screwed it up. That’s not to say they wouldn’t have had a 10-yard gain if we had done it right. But they wouldn’t have had people running wide open uncontested for 30 and 40-yard gains.

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Friday conversation with Nick Saban, Part II

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- The Alabama-Florida rivalry has become the game in the SEC, even though they don’t play on a yearly basis in the regular season.

Of course, if they keep meeting in the SEC championship game every year, it might as well be a regular affair.

Saturday night's game at Bryant-Denny Stadium will mark the third straight year that they’ve played, the first regular-season meeting since 2006, and it could be the first of two meetings between the teams this season.

Here’s Part II of my conversation with Alabama coach Nick Saban:

Florida has won 27 of its last 28 games overall, and Alabama has won 31 of its last 33 games overall. Two of those three losses have been to each other. Did you think you would ever see a time when two teams separated from the rest of the league the way these two teams have the last couple of years?

Nick Saban: No, but I still think there are a lot of good teams in the league. It’s just a credit to the players on these two particular teams who could play with that kind of consistency and performance. I really do believe that. Now, we’ll find out a lot about each other in the game on Saturday, if we still have those kind of teams. I don’t know if we do. We’ll find out. With every good team you play, you sort of find out more about who you are. That’s why you play the season. We’re going to have to play our best. They’re the best team we’ve played to this point.

Where does this Alabama offense rate in terms of how diverse it is? You have more passing yards than rushing yards at this point. Is this your most diverse offense since you’ve been at Alabama?

Saban: Yes, and I think we’re even more diverse than we were last year, and I think we have better balance this year. We do a better job of throwing the ball. We still run it halfway decent. The first year we were here, we could throw the ball halfway decent. We really couldn’t run it very well. For two years, we had some pretty decent backs. It wasn’t like we couldn’t throw it, but we were a running team. This year, we can do either. That kind of balance is what we’ve always strived for. We’ve got some weapons outside, some good runners, and our quarterback is a guy who’s experienced and makes good decisions.

Mark Ingram's first touchdown run last week against Arkansas, with the way he was able to keep his balance those last 5 yards, was about as good as you’ll see. Have you seen many better?

Saban: No, it was a good one. He had a couple in that Duke game that were pretty good, too. That’s what makes the team what it is, the players. You’ve got good players and they make good plays, and sometimes they make plays that nobody else could make. Not very many people could have made that play that Mark made. Now, they would have gained 15 yards, but it wouldn’t have been a 54-yard touchdown.

Now that you’re in your fourth season here, is this job -- with its magnitude and how deeply woven Alabama football is to the people in this state -- about what you thought it would be?

Saban: It is what I thought it was going to be, and that’s a positive, not a negative. But it really doesn’t affect me because I go about what I do exactly the same as I did at Michigan State and LSU and Miami … and stayed focused on that. It all gets down to playing well. You’ve got to play well. All that other stuff is clutter, man. It doesn’t really mean anything. I doesn’t help you win. You have to play well, and then you have to work all these days out of the year you’re talking about to be able to play well in those 12, 13, 14 or 15 times in the season. That’s what you do it all for. I’ve been able to stay in that mode, so it’s not that much different for me.

In the past, though, this job has swallowed up some coaches.

Saban: Yeah, but LSU was a lot like this, too, and it was the only school in Louisiana. So at least it was for that state. Alabama is a little more broad-stroked. I guess you just get used to it.

Speaking of LSU, do you feel like you have this program rolling at that same level you did at LSU when you left to go to the NFL following the 2004 season?

Saban: The one thing that could affect us here more than it did there is that the players stayed in school there. If we continue to have a lot of guys go out for the draft, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get it quite there. It’s hard to replace good players. We’d be a completely different team this year if we had Rolando McClain and Kareem Jackson. Both were first-round draft picks, and they should have gone out for the draft. But if you have two, three or four of those guys every year, it’s hard to maintain that level. We’ll have several more this year in that same situation.

Yeah, but a national championship in the first three seasons and a 17-game winning streak against SEC teams in regular-season play is a pretty good way to start, isn’t it?

Saban: The way I approach it is that you never, ever feel that you don’t have to keep moving forward, that you don’t have to keep recruiting good players, that you’ve ever truly arrived. I didn’t feel that way at LSU, and I don’t feel that way here. Things happen so quickly, and your team changes. I mean, 25 or 30 percent of your team changes every year, so you have to change with it. If you have this many good players leaving, you better have that many good players coming in. You just have to keep on keeping on and you can’t ever let your foot off the pedal, man.

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