The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Nick Saban Dropped THE BOMB!

Posted on | February 20, 2022 | Comments Off on Nick Saban Dropped THE BOMB!

While everybody else is expecting war in Ukraine, Alabama football fans are reeling from the nuclear holocaust unleashed in a speech last week by Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban:

“We lost the national championship game, basically because we had 3 corners out, both starters and the best backup. So we’re playing with some guys that didn’t have a lot of experience. It eventually got us in the fourth quarter. We had the kind of team where we had a really good quarterback and we wanted to have skill guys that they couldn’t guard. So we had 2 who were really, really good — (John Metchie III and Jameson Williams). They both got hurt.
”Now, we were playing with guys that typically didn’t have to play at those positions. The lesson to be learned is there were 3 guys, and I’m not calling out any names, that basically didn’t do the things they needed to do throughout the season because they were frustrated with their circumstance. … They’re frustrated with their circumstance because they’re not playing as much as they want to. They’re outcome oriented, they want to worry about how many balls they catch or how much playing time they get or whatever it is. So they don’t focus every day on being a complete player at their position, and they don’t work in practice and prepare for the games because they say to themselves, ‘Why should I do this? I’m not gonna play anyway.’
”So, we had 3 guys, they all had a significant role in the national championship game, and not one of them, not one, could take advantage of the opportunity that they had, because they never ground through it. They never made themselves the best player they could be. When they got the opportunity, they couldn’t do it. That’s a lesson for everybody. What comes first? Playing time? Or making sure that you’re ready to play and create value for yourself when you get the opportunity?”

Whoa! That’s a bombardment of heavy truth, and a message to the rest of the team. A lot of these five-star recruits expect to be starters their freshman year, and think it’s the job of coaches to give them what they consider as their “fair share” of playing time. So if they don’t start right away, they get their feelings hurt and start sulking, but then when something happens to give them a shot — and having Metchie and Williams both get hurt was clearly not something anyone anticipated — they’re not ready for it. You can contrast that to Mac Jones, who rode the bench for three years before he got his chance to be Alabama’s starting quarterback, but by God, he was ready when he got that chance.




 

Category: Alabama, Football

Comments

Comments are closed.