Following its first scrimmage of spring football, Alabama isn’t quite where it needs to be on the field but Nick Saban isn’t disappointed. After a hectic season of performance-based peaks and valleys, where the consistency of the team’s leadership was put into question it appears as if the Crimson Tide has responded so far this spring.
Alabama several of its core players from last season return and it has paved the way for a stronger group at the top to help bring the rest of the team along. Saban addressed what he’d seen as of Saturday from his team during the spring.
“This team’s been really good,” Saban said. “This team doesn’t have any complainers, guys just do what they’re supposed to do. They work hard. We don’t have a lot of negative guys on this team and we have some real positive leadership that I think is always important and hopefully, we can build on that and that’ll be something that’s an asset for this team.
“It’s easy to start that way. It’s more difficult to sustain and hopefully, this team will be able to sustain it and that’ll help us in terms of our development when the fall rolls around.”
As Saban pointed out, maintaining this mentality throughout the spring and into the fall will be the true test of the leadership of the 2022 group.
In terms of the scrimmage, there were still a few bumps in the road that are expected at this point in the year. Saban reported both teams struggling with dropped passes and deadball penalties throughout the day which need to be addressed. But what Saban is looking for following today is for his players to be able to self-assess their mistakes and learn.
“I think at this point everyone needs to be able to self-assess,” Saban said. “I think you wanna self-assess what kind of competitor you are. Did you give effort? Did you play with toughness? Did you really know what to do? None of those things really take any ability it’s just about being consciences and about being in good enough condition to be able to sustain those things for the entire scrimmage.
“But look, we’re not disappointed with where we are. We’re certainly not where we’d like to be or wanna be or need to be.”
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
