Nick Saban jokes about Greg McElroy claiming he never had a bad practice at Alabama

Greg McElroy was there for the start of the Nick Saban era at Alabama. McElroy arrived in Tuscaloosa for his freshman season in 2007, the same year that Saban took over as the Crimson Tide coach – and has claimed he never had a bad practice during his tenure at Alabama. The two discussed this claim further of McElroy’s morning radio show.

“I think if you go back to the standard of what are good and bad practices and what the capabilities of [the individual player] are potentially, I would agree with him that he never really had a bad practice,” Saban said on a recent appearance on McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning.

“But again, I don’t know how high the bar of expectations at the time were, either,” Saban added.

McElroy became the starter by his third season, helping deliver a 37-21 victory against Texas in the 2009 BCS National Championship before going on to be a seventh-round draft pick later that year. That was the first of what would go on to be six national titles in Saban’s first 15 years as he quickly turned Alabama into the gold standard of college football.

“I think that Greg is exactly right because he understands the concepts, but [I] tell players all the time, you’re either going to get better or you’re going to get worse in every practice and every opportunity that you have,” Saban said. “So, you want to create the right habits. If you don’t have the right mindset to do things the right way in practice, then you’re not going to improve. Why are you practicing if not to improve?

“The fact of the matter is, you really want to practice things until you can’t get it wrong, because then it becomes a habit. Then you get in the game and in the heat of the battle – because it is a habit – that’s how you’re going to execute and that’s what you’re going to do. I think it’s important [for] players to understand that practices are important to contributing to that.”