Nick Saban challenges Alabama players to self-assess following first scrimmage

Alabama coach Nick Saban has a high bar for the players in his program and believes this year’s group still has work to do to reach it. With the Crimson Tide holding their first scrimmage on Saturday, Saban challenged his players to ask themselves how they can get there.

Speaking at his press conference Tuesday, the coach revealed the factors that he believes leads to winning football. He urged his players to “get out of your comfort zone” and take a step back to look at what they can do individually to make the team better.

“I think the question you ask is: What percentage of the guys are playing winning football and are you willing to do the things you need to invest in yourself so that you are doing the things you need to so you can improve?” Saban said. “Because the tendency, especially in the conditions that we’re in, is it’s very easy to endure practice. Do what you have to do to get by. Don’t really focus. Don’t really play fast. If you ask everybody in the room, ‘do you want to win?’ They’d all say, ‘yeah, we want to win.’ But are you willing to do the things you need to do to win?

“You’ve gotta get out of your comfort zone. Some people would say you’ve gotta make sacrifices and do things so that you can improve. The way I’d rather say it is you’ve gotta invest in yourself in terms of doing the things that are going to help you on and off the field to be the best player you can be. The bottom line is to ask yourself, ‘can your teammates trust you to do your job?’ That should be everybody’s goal in terms of what they strive to do and what they’re trying to do. That’s how you compete for playing time.”

Alabama is coming off of an 11-2 season in which it missed the College Football Playoff for just the second time under Saban. The Crimson Tide’s two losses last year came by a combined four points, and they were just a play or two away from a different outcome.

Alabama loses several key pieces from last year’s team including quarterback Bryce Young and linebacker Will Anderson. Those players were two big leaders on last year’s team and, in order to avoid missing the CFP again this year, Saban is challenging others to step up in their place.

However, he also made the point that he doesn’t want to lean on just two or three players to encourage everyone else to stay in line. He argued that the team would be much better off with several players at each position simply knowing what to do on their own, going back to the idea of self-evaluation.

“Everybody talks about leadership all the time, but I think it’s also important (to ask) how many guys on the team need to be led,” he said. “If you’ve got a bunch of guys that are mature and going about things the right way, they’re all setting a good example. They’re all buying in. They’re all doing the things that they need to do. So they don’t really have to have somebody impact them every day to do the right thing. The more guys that we have that fit in that category, that’s more important than the guys that are the leaders on the team because I think that’s what you’re trying to get.

“There are some guys that have an impact on other players. There’s a couple guys on the offensive line that have provided some really good leadership. I think there’s some guys on the defense that have some maturity that’s provided some leadership. We actually need it at every position because if you have guys at every position that are setting an example every day by what they do, it gives young players somebody to emulate and I think that’s important. The fewer guys that we have that need somebody to emulate, the better off we’re gonna be.”

Alabama will hope to continue to work to reach the Saban standard before kicking off the season on Sept. 2 against Middle Tennessee.