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During Alabama’s undefeated march through its schedule this season, it’s hard to imagine the Crimson Tide faced any truly tough times.
Yet coach Nick Saban has brought up adversity on multiple occasions throughout the year, and a reporter at Friday’s SEC championship game press conference asked him to clarify what challenges his team has faced in 2018.
“We have internal challenges. Every team does,” Saban said. “When you lose players, you have players get injured, and we’ve had a couple of really good players on defense that were injured and are out for the year. We’ve had several really good backup players that were core special teams guys that were injured and out for the year.
“So I think internally you always have challenges of who’s going to step up. Is that guy going to be able to play effectively for you? Are the other players on your team going to have confidence that that guy can do the job well? And how’s that going to affect the chemistry of your team?
“So we’ve had those kinds of challenges throughout the season, and I think we’ve handled them well. So far, the next guy has done a good enough job for us.”
Saban is right about his defense facing a slew of injuries this year, not to mention the turnover on his coaching staff and the quarterback swap between Tua Tagovailoa and incumbent starter Jalen Hurts.
He’s also right about his players handling it well — the No. 1 Crimson Tide has looked like the best team in the country all year and can cement that claim with a victory against No. 4 Georgia at 4 p.m. ET on Saturday in Atlanta.
Marcus covers SEC football for Saturday Down South.
