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Nick Saban on Alabama’s 2023 season so far: ‘This has been a very enjoyable, challenging year’
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Nick Saban has had a different season than he is used to at Alabama this year.
Rather than having a roster full of NFL-ready players, Saban has more of a work-in-progress team with a younger roster. But he’s embraced the challenge, and now the Tide are starting to click after taking an early loss against Texas.
“This has been a very enjoyable, challenging year,” Saban said during the SEC coaches teleconference Wednesday. “Got a different kind of team, they’ve shown great resiliency in terms of how they’ve competed in games. We continue to have a lot of things that we can correct as coaches to try to help us continue to make progress as a team. I want the players to look forward in a positive way.”
To encourage his team and keep them motivated, he uses a weightlifting analogy to measure progress made throughout the season.
“I kind of use the analogy if you started out bench pressing 200 pounds and your goal is to bench press 300 and you get to 250, you’ve made improvement, you’ve made progress,” Saban said. “But you want to still be motivated to try to get to your goal and continue to improve and make positive progress.”
It’s safe to say Alabama has made progress since the beginning of the season. After the Week 2 loss to Texas, Alabama has played nearly perfect and has picked up big wins against Ole Miss and Texas A&M.
Quarterback Jalen Milroe is coming into his own after taking some time to get adjusted, and his progress is reflecting on the entire team.
Now Saban wants his team to be able to enjoy big wins rather than take a sigh of relief afterward. Being able to do that is a sign of a good team that expects to win big games.
“What I want players to do is really enjoy wins,” Saban said. “If you beat another team, especially in our league, because they’re all tough, you should enjoy that, you should feel good about that. You shouldn’t be relieved that you won the game. Whether it’s expectations, whoever creates it or whatever. I don’t think relief is a good emotional state to be in, you want to feel like beat teams, you should be happy about it. You should be mature about things you need to correct and positive about how you can improve your performance and just kind of have the right psychological disposition to make progress and move forward.”
Saban is hoping his team can enjoy some big wins for the rest of the season. Alabama still has to face tough teams like Tennessee and LSU later in the season and is hoping to find its way into the SEC Championship and the College Football Playoff, and the Tide are making good progress.
