Nick Saban praises ‘spirit’ of Alabama team throughout spring

Nick Saban was quite pleased with how the 2023 Alabama team acquitted itself during spring practices. There is certainly room for improvement, the coach made sure to remind, but the way this team goes about practicing and setting a tone is leaving a good impression on Saban.

And following the Alabama spring game on Saturday afternoon, Saban spoke at length about the positive qualities he notices in this team that might’ve been lacking in past years. For one, this team has linemen striving to set the tone and physically dominate opponents.

“I like this team’s toughness. I think they’re physical. They play hard. We don’t have a bunch of guys that are soft or looking for an easy way. They try to please the coaches, they try to play with intensity. I think we have better practice habits than we’ve had in the past. And I think that mentality gets developed in the offensive line, the defensive line and on special teams. And I think we have some guys that are trying to step up and do that,” Saban said.

It being spring practice, though, there were blemishes to address. Turnovers, drops, missed blocking assignments and mental errors on defense on defense were all issues Saban highlighted as needing to be eliminated.

Following a season where the Alabama defense was often uncharacteristically out of sorts and error-prone and the offense was at times made functional purely by the presence of Heisman winner Bryce Young, Saban inevitably wanted to find a renewed respect for the little things.

“Those kinds of things are what get you beat. That’s what we want to eliminate. The way you eliminate that is players are committed to doing what they need to do to play winning football, which means they’re committed to what they need to do to help the team be successful. And they don’t ignore the things that are important to winning. They respect those things, they buy into them,” Saban said. “They do those things every day to create the kind of habits that will enable us to go out and be the kind of team that we’re capable of.”

Because the 2023 Tide are doing the right things in Saban’s eyes, the coach is generally content. A youthful team got players lots of reps in the spring and the head coach is confident in the direction after the spring.

And he was happy the players got a bit of a reward in playing in front of some fans in Bryant-Denny Stadium.

“I think all-in-all we had a good spring. I really liked the spirit and the energy of this team. I think everybody in spring practice probably gets tired of competing against each other at some point in time, but it was good to go out and play in front of a crowd today. I think that energized players to some degree. And I was very pleased with the crowd that we had. I think it goes a long way to helping people see what kind of passion we have for the football program here and the football team and how we support the team. So, it’s really simple. It’s all about people being committed to the team,” Saban said.