Alabama Football Has Always Been About the Process, Not First-Year Results
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — There are a lot of talented players that come to Tuscaloosa to play for Nick Saban. For a good reason too — there isn't a better place to play college football if your aspirations are to make it to the NFL.
But the sport is different now. Players up and leave in the middle of the season at times if things aren't going the way they want them to.
That's become a problem at all programs, including Saban's.
"I think that if guys can stay focused on long-term, in terms of what they're trying to develop and improve," Saban said. "We've got all these freshmen who want to play as freshmen, and we've had, I don't know, you can count them up — how many guys have gone out early for the draft? So if it's 45 guys, I don't know if that's the right number or not, I've had 32 phone calls times 45 — whatever that number is. In the thousands, right? I've never been asked once how much a guy played as a freshman. Never. Not once."
"Everybody wants to know, what did you develop into? But yet, the whole mindset is, 'If I don't play right away.' ... But that expectation gets created by a lot of external factors, too."
There have also been a lot of cases of players waiting their turn and getting the same result. That's what appears to be so frustrating to Saban.
"I think there's a lot of examples of guys that have done that, probably in a lot of programs," Saban said. "But I'm just here to speak about our program. A guy like Mac Jones, who didn't play until his fourth year and played very well when he did, and developed. So, I think it speaks volumes of their commitment to the program and seeing that if they do the right things, they're gonna have success."
"We've had guys do very well in the pros, in the NFL, even though they've had maybe not a significant role their entire career here, but played well at some point in time. And that gave them an opportunity. I think that one of the big things that we try to get guys to understand is we have good players on our team, so you're gonna have a better chance to develop because the competition in practice is actually going to be beneficial to your development."
Saban understands the frustration of his players that have likely been the best player on the field their whole life, but wants them to trust in his process.
"[Playing quickly] becomes the expectation. So whenever it doesn’t happen, a guy’s frustrated. I get that. I understand that," Saban said. "We’ve got to try to get guys to be able to stay focused on what they have to do to develop as players, make improvement so that when they do play, they create value for themselves. Rather than worrying about just playing. But if you go out there and don’t play well, what kind of value are you creating for yourself? And what kind of confidence are you building? So all these things are things that we really try to emphasize with our young players, and the guys that buy into that, they end up doing pretty well."
