Alabama Football: Past Nick Saban presser may explain what went wrong in 2018

Clues from Alabama football coach Nick Saban about why the 2018 Crimson Tide team did not achieve its national championship goals.

A past Nick Saban speech to the Alabama Football Coaches Association (AFCA) focused on the importance of relationships between players and coaches. The speech recently received considerable attention on Twitter. A video of some of those comments is included near the end of this post.

Before diving into what Nick Saban said, a quick review of Nick Saban as a master communicator. Saban is a wordsmith. The same discipline he teaches Alabama football players is applied to all his public utterances. There is a purpose behind everything he says.

When he spoke to the AFCA coaches, his purpose was to educate, to enlighten, to stress important tools in leading young men. What he talked about were relationships. Specifically what Nick focused on was the relationships between players and coaches.

A quick summary about the video below – once a player becomes one of “his guys,” they will always be one of “his guys,” throughout life. He mentioned three of them from Michigan State were waiting to talk to him after the speech.

The words from Nick and the obvious conviction with which they were spoken conflict with many national perceptions of Nick Saban. Famous for his rants and obsessive standards for performance, Nick Saban is rarely acknowledged as a father figure to many of his players. Many of his players, from programs going all the way back to Toledo, acknowledge the powerful influence Saban has had on their lives.

In explaining the importance of relationships, Nick said something else interesting. Nick has not engaged in much media conversation since the national championship loss. When he has, his focus has been on congratulating Clemson and admitting his team was not well prepared. He has not made excuses and he has said little about why the team was unprepared.

In the AFCA speech, Saban said,

"If there is one thing different about our team this year, it is that I don’t think our coaches spent enough time building relationships with the people on the team, it’s the biggest difference in our team."

It is clear, Nick Saban believes when an Alabama football coaching staff comes up short in building player relationships, it negatively affects team performance. Less than trusting relationships can be a barrier to championship performance. Could it be such deficiency in trust may have cost the Alabama Crimson Tide a national championship?

We cannot say but seeking to avoid such a deficiency could also explain why Nick Saban has been quick to rebuild his staff for the second straight season.

Check out the video excerpt in the tweet below.

Earlier in the week, Nick Saban commented on the value of continuity in coaching staffs. But Nick Saban will never maintain continuity by accepting less than optimal performance by his coaches.

No Alabama football fan is satisfied after a lost national championship. That dissatisfaction should not distract us from continuing to appreciate having the game’s greatest coach.