On Friday, during his weekly appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show”, former Alabama coach Nick Saban reflected on the Tide’s season-opening setback against Florida State, questioning how a 7-0 lead turned into a 31-17 loss.
Saban suggested the team could have been dealing with anxiety or high expectations in the season opener.
"I do think there was something in that game that is tough to understand, in my opinion, in that Alabama looked great going down the field on the first drive," Saban said Friday on "The Pat McAfee Show." "Florida State gets the ball and goes right down the field and scores, and then the whole psychological disposition of Alabama's team changed, for what reason, I don't know. Was it anxiety? Was it expectation?"
"One thing about coaching at Alabama is they expect you to win every game. There is a high expectation, and the standard is really, really high for what you're supposed to accomplish and what you're supposed to do. You need to protect your players from that and give them a different way to compete in the game so they're not looking at the scoreboard, they're not worried about the outcome, they can stay focused on the things that they need to do to compete in the game for 60 minutes and play one play at a time so they're not worried about that," he added.
When you are the head coach of a top-tier program, you are held to a standard and expectation of winning. At Alabama, Saban set the standard that you don’t just have a winning season every year, but you have to make the playoffs, and if you don’t win the championship, the season is a loss. After any loss, especially one as significant as the one last Saturday, the outside noise on social media comes alive and starts to attack not just the coach but the players as well.
"Because that's all they hear everywhere they go on social media – they're expected to win. You can't let that creep in that anxiety about being outcome-oriented – affect performance," he stated.
Kalen DeBoer has been a winner everywhere he has been, but he has not been at a place like Alabama or in a conference like the SEC, where "it just means more." DeBoer currently holds a 9-5 record at Alabama, and Saban believes that DeBoer is feeling the pressure already.
"Kalen is a really good guy," Saban said. "He's a good coach. He's always had success everywhere he's been. Maybe he hasn't had to deal with this kind of scrutiny in the past. But if you're going to be successful, you've got to be able to self-assess and figure out, hey, what can I do better? I know that he's reaching out to a lot of people trying to do that. Hopefully, they get it turned around this week and develop some confidence on this team so they can move forward in a positive way."
Saban went on to discuss how he would handle the situation and offered some advice to the Crimson Tide coaching staff on how they should approach this week.
"When you have a negative consequence and you don't teach and do a good job of identifying what do we need to fix, so the players have something they can relate to – if you don't teach, it really affects morale in a negative way," he said. "So I think you have to be positive and show the players when they did it right, here's the success we had. When we didn't do it right, whether it was even one player who didn't do it right – maybe that's why they had success."
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