Friday's scrimmage should give Saban a better feel for his younger players
Six practices into spring camp and Nick Saban has seen progress in his unit. Alabama has spent its last three workouts in full pads and, according to the head coach, has come along nicely with fundamentals while showing a good work ethic during workouts.
However, the bulk of development at this juncture generally comes away from the spotlight of the coach’s gaze. Saban opened his Tuesday evening press conference by stressing the importance of self-discipline and how it is necessary in building a successful team.
“I think that's important to being able to play with discipline on the field,” Saban said. “Because you're a disciplined person. You're a disciplined person when you get up at eight o'clock in the morning, you make good choices and decisions as a person, as a student and as a player and it becomes a part of who you are. So I think that's something that we continue to work on with our players.”
Saban’s opening message appeared particularly tailored toward the younger players on the team who are still in the early stages of soaking up the head coach’s patented process. Alabama brings in 15 early enrollees in addition to last year’s freshman class, which was deprived of a spring camp due to COVID-19.
The majority of the Tide’s younger players come from successful high school programs where they are accustomed to the expectations they’ll face at Alabama. However, there are others who weren’t afforded that luxury and require more of a learning curve at the next level.
“Guys that have a lot of talent and ability but really didn’t play in good programs and had success just because they were better than everybody else, it’s a work in progress sometimes to get them to understand that doing things the right way, that they’re not necessarily going to have the same success against the level of competition now that they had when they were in high school if they don’t do things correctly,” Saban explained. “But sometimes it’s a little harder to convince them, because they don’t really have any experience in that.
“But when guys come from good programs, they usually know what it takes from a work ethic standpoint, from an intangible standpoint, discipline, toughness, being responsible to do their job, finishing plays, giving effort. A lot of those kind of things, they know what it takes, because that’s what they grew up with and that’s what they’re used to doing.”
This week should provide a good indication of the mental discipline in Alabama’s younger players as the Tide will hold its first scrimmage on Friday.
“It'll be interesting to see how they do in the scrimmage on [Friday] when there's no coach standing on the field telling them what to do,” Saban said. “I've talked about this before, you know, it's important that guys have enough confidence, not only in what they're supposed to do, but how they're supposed to do it and why it's important to do it that way.”
When asked Tuesday, Saban said he normally has a good indication of which newcomers will perform well during their first game-like setting. However, until players are left on their own, it’s impossible to know for sure.
“Sometimes you get surprised both ways,” Saban explained. “Guys that do well in practice and you think they’ve got it, they get in the scrimmage and just completely go sort of rat trap on you. And then there’s other guys that didn’t practice all that great and you’re really questioning whether they know what to do, and when they get in a competitive situation, they actually do better.
“That’s something that you cannot always judge, how a guy’s going to do when he gets in a competitive situation. Some guys get anxious and they get frustrated easily and it affects their performance, and other guys, they welcome the challenge and they’re not bothered by good, bad and indifferent and they just keep playing the next play and they actually do better.”
Saban said the team will practice again Thursday where it will take part in “a lot of situational stuff” that it plans to use in the scrimmage. From there, the head coach will get his first true look at where his team stands and what he needs to focus on moving forward.
