Jalen Milroe reflects on Nick Saban's retirement announcement at Alabama

Jalen Milroe reflected on Nick Saban’s retirement and the Alabama players didn’t necessarily know it was going to be after the 2023 season.

Now under Kalen DeBoer, the train keeps rolling for the Crimson Tide. But the players, under Milroe, united once Saban decided to call it a career, at least as a coach.

The love and admiration for Saban will never go away though, as Milroe detailed on Thursday’s First Take. 

“For us as players we didn’t know when coach was gonna retire,” Milroe said. “We thought he was gonna coach for a long time. And with anything you got to look at, you know, of course as players, life after football, but also life after coaching football and what a great opportunity for him to still be around something that he loves, which is sports. 

“Going into this new journey that he’s going on now, I’m super excited for him, because this is something awesome for him and us as players we just had to unite together.” 

The transition has been smooth, according to Milroe. From the outside looking in, losing Saban to retirement would be quite difficult.

“It was something that we had to just acclimate to,” Milroe said. “And that’s something that we were able to do because there are four stages to the offseason. There’s fourth quarter, spring ball one, going into summer one and summer two. And so with that it’s all about building and getting better each step of the way, and coach DeBoer has done a really good job with that. 

“Was really just building us together, getting everybody to come together to have shared goals, shared mindset, and ultimately just push them to be successful. But I’ll say the transition from going from Coach Saban now to this ‘24 team, it’s all about refocusing as a group.”

Milroe took away lessons from Saban that he’ll use to this day, as he detailed earlier during his tour of New York and ESPN.

“There are times of self doubt, there’s times where you have to push through hard circumstances and throughout that time, never waver from that,” Milroe said. “And it comes from a leader in coach Saban, pushing each and every day to be the best you, that’s very important. Just kind of go 1-0 each and every day, and just trying to attack the day at hand and it’s all about trusting the process.”