Link: Nick Saban: Alabama lacked ownership in CFP

JustNeedMe81

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If you need to be reminded, last season was nothing of which to be ashamed. Alabama basically fell one second short of winning consecutive national championships Jalen Hurts became the SEC Player of the Year as a true freshman.
But it wasn't good enough at a place that counts success as championships. Saban said there were those whose "ownership and togetherness" wasn't 100 percent after the SEC Championship Game last December.
Saban: "We won however many games we won [14]. We got to the finals. Our teams that win always have tremendous ownership, tremendous togetherness … But sort of the litmus test is what happens from the SEC Championship Game until you play in the playoff games. Last year, we didn't seem to have everybody in the organization who had that ownership and togetherness like we'd had all season long.
"It was enough to get us to come up short. We didn't play great. Clemson played great. I'm not taking anything away from them … People want to make a lot of excuses for what happened in the game. The fact of the matter is we didn't stop them when we needed to. We had a lead. I felt like we had a lot of good players on defense. From my standpoint, we didn't do enough to help them."
That was interesting part about where he said about the team....
 

RollTide_HTTR

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That was interesting part about where he said about the team....
Sometimes I wonder if he says this type of stuff simply for motivation. He is always trying to get the team to buy in and focus and one way to do that would be to create a situation where every team that loses late in the season "wasn't focused" while every team that wins a NCG is focused.
 
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JustNeedMe81

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Sometimes I wonder if he says this type of stuff simply for motivation. He is always trying to get the team to buy in and focus and one way to do that would be to create a situation where every team that loses late in the season "wasn't focused" while every team that wins a NCG is focused.
I think he's telling the truth. If you go back to the tape, you'll see few things that will stand out.. we didn't tackle well at times.. we weren't just not focused.
 

UntouchableCrew

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Sometimes I wonder if he says this type of stuff simply for motivation. He is always trying to get the team to buy in and focus and one way to do that would be to create a situation where every team that loses late in the season "wasn't focused" while every team that wins a NCG is focused.
Agree for sure. Both Championship Games vs. Clemson could have gone either way pretty easily. I don't think one team was that much more focused than the other. Sometimes those are just the breaks... And in general Saban knows how important it is to be focused so he harps on it to motivate the kids who had their hearts broken.

If anything, honestly, it sounds like he's criticizing his coaches more than the players.
 

RTR91

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Curious as to the extent of the word "organization." Is he solely referencing players?


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JDCrimson

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Curious as to the extent of the word "organization." Is he solely referencing players?


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I don't think so. I think the way it turned out has to be pinned on the coaching staff. Think about it, kiffin, Napier, and Cristobal all had varying levels of distraction. Sarkisian was not prepared as an emergency option. Taken together, that's a whole lot of instability especially for one side of the ball. Not coincidentally the side of the ball that had the best opportunity to control the flow and outcome of the game.

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deliveryman35

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I've said it before I'll say it again--we were extremely fortunate to win against Clemson the first time and it was a razor thin margin loss the second time. DW was the equalizer that our D never figured out--in either game.
 

dadleyblane5

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I've said it before I'll say it again--we were extremely fortunate to win against Clemson the first time and it was a razor thin margin loss the second time. DW was the equalizer that our D never figured out--in either game.
We "figured" him out the 2nd time we played them, and was eating their offense alive. But, we couldn't sustain drives to keep our Offense on the field and our D got tired from so many plays they played. If the Offense could've stayed on the field more, IMO, we would've wiped the floor with DW. JMO
 

B1GTide

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We "figured" him out the 2nd time we played them, and was eating their offense alive. But, we couldn't sustain drives to keep our Offense on the field and our D got tired from so many plays they played. If the Offense could've stayed on the field more, IMO, we would've wiped the floor with DW. JMO
This is 100% true. Even when you scored, and you scored plenty, you didn't control the clock at all. They controled the clock, even when they were not scoring. Give them credit - they had a game plan, stuck with it, and it worked out for them.

As for Saban's comments - I suspect that he is using last year's failure to motivate EVERYONE in the program. Saban has had success several times at Alabama doing very similar things.

The hunt for #17 continues.
 

RollTide_HTTR

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This is 100% true. Even when you scored, and you scored plenty, you didn't control the clock at all. They controled the clock, even when they were not scoring. Give them credit - they had a game plan, stuck with it, and it worked out for them.

As for Saban's comments - I suspect that he is using last year's failure to motivate EVERYONE in the program. Saban has had success several times at Alabama doing very similar things.

The hunt for #17 continues.
Ditto this. People forget that Clemson only had 7 points at half. They also only had 1 drive in the first half that was longer than 40 yards.
 

TideEngineer08

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Ditto this. People forget that Clemson only had 7 points at half. They also only had 1 drive in the first half that was longer than 40 yards.
Right and yet still nearly 50 plays run in that first half. The damage was done by that point.

I agree he's attempting to motivate and get folks on the same page going into this season. And I agree that includes everyone, coaches included.
 

CajunCrimson

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One player for Clemson killed us, and it wasn't DW. If we could have covered Hunter Renfroe in either game, we win by 3 TDs...
Or if someone would have blocked him on RA's fumble return, it would have been "game over" -- his tackle on Anderson saved the game for Clemson.
 

RollTide_HTTR

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One player for Clemson killed us, and it wasn't DW. If we could have covered Hunter Renfroe in either game, we win by 3 TDs...
This is where my Eddie Jackson "What if" comes in. If Eddie was healthy then Minkah would have been covering Renfrow instead of Brown. I know Renfrow had some success vs Minkah in the 1st game but I think its fair to expect that Minkah would have done better this time around.
 

Bamabuzzard

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Right and yet still nearly 50 plays run in that first half. The damage was done by that point.

I agree he's attempting to motivate and get folks on the same page going into this season. And I agree that includes everyone, coaches included.
And you could tell Dabo knew it when he was interviewed at the half. Amazingly he knew EXACTLY how many plays they had run. It was like body blows in the early rounds of a fight to set up the knock out punch in the later rounds.
 

BamaMoon

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It is very clear that CNS knew the precise reason we lost the game was a failure of the offense in the second half to make first downs. Forget scoring. If we have one or two 8-10 play drives that ended in punts (instead of 3 and outs) we win #17.

Mr. Daball, here's your problem to fix.
 

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