Nick Saban seems to have identified Alabama’s problem following an embarrassing 40-35 loss to Vanderbilt in Week 1: Kalen DeBoer’s assistant coaches.
Saban shared some advice with the Crimson Tide’s coordinators and position coaches during an October 11 appearance on The Pat McAfee Show: reinforce the message your head coach is sending to your players.
"One thing I would like to comment on, though, talking to Kalen was I always really put a lot of pressure on the assistant coaches because they're kind of your lieutenants to get the message to the team," Saban said. "And I think Kalen has been doing a good job of getting the right message to the team but everybody in the organization has to reinforce that because they're the people that sit in the meetings every day with the players, and they got to impact that."
Saban stressed he wouldn’t be too involved with DeBoer as the first-year head coach navigates through his first loss, but this declaration on Pat McAfee’s show sure seems to be an unofficial word of advice for Alabama’s new head man.
Nick Saban calls out Alabama for getting complacent after beating Georgia
Saban wasn’t worried about the X’s and O’s in the Vanderbilt loss. The College GameDay analyst and former college football coaching G.O.A.T. was more worried about Alabama’s collective complacency following a spectacular 41-34 win over Georgia.
"I think instead of just particularly talking about the Alabama-Vanderbilt game, I think what you see is a lot of peaks and valleys in college football right now," he said. "A lot of teams that have big wins have significant letdowns the next week. I always talk about complacency, but if you put a little complacency with a little arrogance because you had a big win -- wherever it was -- and then you don't focus on the right things the next week, you really don't get the kind of results you'd like to have. Because when you're not focused on the right stuff, your execution goes to pot in a hurry."
While no longer in charge of the University of Alabama’s football team, Saban is still an advisor. It’s clear what advice he has for DeBoer’s coaching staff.
And if these issues aren’t fixed, Saban will likely have a message for DeBoer himself at some point.
