Nick Saban hammers Alabama effort following week one win

Alabama head coach Nick Saban is a master of fighting complacency. When a team wins as many national championships as Alabama has over the years, it’s something that inevitably creeps in the program from time to time.

When Nick Saban smells the slightest whiff of complacency in his program or sees it in his program in any way, he makes sure his players know about it and he does everything in his power to squash it.

After Wednesday’s practice, he let his players know he wasn’t happy with their mindset and that he could feel them getting complacent after their blowout victory against Miami. Here’s what he had to say to the media.

“Okay, I think several years ago, it was the sixth or seventh game of the year,” Saban started. “We just beat Texas A&M and people started talking about our team. And I had to bring everyone’s attention to what I referred to as rat poison.

“So, now we basically played one half of one game, alright. We went ahead 27-0 in the game. And then, it was basically 17-16 after that with two stops inside the five-yard line. So we didn’t maintain our intensity in the game. So, we were affected by the scoreboard. So, we haven’t proven that we can play for 60 minutes.

“Then we come out on Monday and really, not ready to practice. I guess because of the respect we have for our opponent. I don’t know all that or maybe it’s what they read on social media or in the media or whatever after one half of a game this season. Then, it’s hot yesterday. So we’ve got every external factor in the world that is affecting our ability to maintain intensity and play the way we need to play and practice the way we need to practice to improve.

“We’ve got the scoreboard affects us. Who we’re playing affects us. The heat affects us. The media and what you guys write every day affects us. So, to me, we’ve gotta prove that we can play and maintain intensity for 60 minutes of the game.

Nick Saban has a very clear mantra. ‘Do your job.’

“Execute,” Saban said. “Do our job. Play hard. Finish games. Finish plays. Do things the way we’re supposed to do it.”

Then the Alabama head coach went on another rant about his team currently having the wrong mindset throughout the week.

“I want to see if we have leadership,” Saban said. “Do we get people to respond? Do people care enough to understand what we have to do to maintain our intensity for 60 minutes in the game, to improve as a team to do the things we need to do to improve as a team — to have the mindset that we need to have.

“We have some guys that are doing the right things, and they’re trying to set a good example and they’re trying to pull other guys along, but we also have other guys who need to pick it up and understand what it takes to practice, what it takes to prepare,” Saban continued. “Some people have the idea that exertion through the course of the week in some kind of way impairs your ability to play on Saturday, but really you have to have exertion through the week to be ready to play on Saturday and the key to that is how do you take care of yourself, how do you recover, how do you sleep, how do you hydrate, how do you use the sports science center and all the technology we have to help guys recover.

“So, you’re going to be good on Saturday. I think we have some guys that have it backwards. We’re trying to get it fixed.”

Alabama hosts Mercer on Saturday at 4:00 p.m. (ET). The game will be televised on SEC Network.