Bryce Young says Alabama had 'a lot of pride' in finishing strong after LSU loss

Alabama didn’t mail it in after picking up their second loss of the season. It could have been very easy for the Crimson Tide to call it a year after going down 32-31 at LSU which, come the College Football Playoff selection, would have been very hard to make a case with. Still, although the Crimson Tide did fall short of the CFP, they justified their position by finishing 10-2 with a three-game win streak to end the season.

Bryce Young says he was proud of the way the Tide ended the year during his media availability. Rather than mourn the opportunities that they lost, he said they were able to rally around a new goal of finishing with double-digit wins in the regular season.

“We have a lot of pride in the work we put in,” said Young. “There’s a lot of pride in, as Coach (Saban) said, for us having 10 wins. We knew that was still on the table at the time.”

Alabama had finished with double-digit wins in 14 straight seasons. The only season they didn’t in that stretch under Nick Saban was his first year in 2007. That’s why, even with their playoff hopes sunk, Young and his teammates wanted to end on a high note and extend the streak, which they did for an impressive 15th season.

Young gave the credit to Saban for finding a way to motivate them during the home stretch of the season. His team could have gotten off track late. In the end, though, he found a way to inspire them and Young says it helped them respond.

“We just really all just rallied behind Coach. After a loss like that, it’s hard. It’s really tough (to) lose control of your destiny and things clearly took a different turn. And that’s hard. But Coach did a great job of centering us, bringing us back. Just showing us how much more we had to play for, showing us the importance of the rest of the year, and finishing strong,” Young said.

“We really all bought into that. I think it really was just listening to Coach, hearing him out, us rallying behind him. And then we understood his message and started to play for each other after that.”

Alabama’s appearance in the Sugar Bowl against Kansas State is a consolation prize more than anything else. It’s well short of the preseason goals they started with. Still, if the end of their year is any indicator of how things could go, Saban will have the Tide motivated and Young and his teammates will be ready come their appearance in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve.