So Alabama lost to Tennessee. First time in 15 years. On the road to the loudest crowd Neyland Stadium has had since, well, it’s been so long nobody can remember.
The Tide played so poorly at times it did not to deserve to win, then it came back and did deserve to win and came within a few inches of a missed field goal of doing it.
So the next day the mouth of SEC football, Paul Finebaum, goes on ESPN’s “Sports Center” and says that Alabama is slipping and suggests Saban is, too.
“It’s the lack of discipline, and it just feels like this program is slipping a little bit,” Finebaum said. “I know that’s a big statement to make considering Nick Saban is the coach, but the penalties are inexcusable.
“We’ve already seen it a couple of times this year. We saw it at Texas, and we saw it again. Saban keeps talking about how they have a path to the SEC and national championship, but it’s very narrow, and it’s about as suffocating as I was yesterday in that Tennessee casket.”
The lack of discipline is very un-Saban like, yes. But here’a s different viewpoint and a big-picture one, too.
The fact of that matter is Alabama has a lot of inexperienced players who are not used to the standard and there is no senior leadership to teach them. Devonta Smith and Jalen Hurts are with the Eagles, Najee Harris and Minkah Fitzpatrick are with the Steelers, Mac Jones is with the Patriots and so forth.
Those and other players held newcomers accountable and jumped on them when they did not play to the championship standards of the program. And by “senior” I mean as senior-type leaders, players who had been in the program a few years and learned from the players before them.
Bryce Young is a leader but he can’t do it all himself. Same with Will Anderson on defense. There’s nobody in the running back room to step up, nobody in the wide receiver room to tell those players to “catch the damned ball,” or in the secondary.
The transfer rule has taken away time players spend with programs and while Saban has done a masterful job of bring in transfers – where the heck would this team be without Jahmyr Gibbs!? – but two highly-touted receivers haven’t done anything (one has been hurt and has yet to play).
The transfer rule has also helped teams that play Bama. Coaches can load rosters from the transfer portal and transform a loser to a contender in one season. Hendon Hooker of Tennessee is a prime example. He transferred to UT from Virginia Tech.
And here’s another factor to consider: maybe the position and assistant coaches are not as good as they were in the past. After all, they are the ones working directly with the players. Perhaps they are not being tough enough on the practice field. One would have to be there then and now to know, but it’s a possible explanation for the undisciplined penalties and receiver drops.
The two coordinators are not as good as they were in the recent past, that’s for sure.
So is Nick Saban slipping? I don’t think so but he’s been so great for so long that whenever the team plays like most other teams, it’s easy to start making such comments.
Saban has now lost three games the past two years. Three. One was in the National Championship game minus the two top receivers and DBs. A few weeks earlier, the Tide ran that same team out of the building in the SEC Championship.
That’s not slipping.
MORE ALABAMA FOOTBALL:
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