On Thursday, Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban discussed how the coronavirus (COVID-19) has impacted an Alabama team that should be right in the middle of spring practices right now.
With that in mind, here's a few highlights from Saban's first teleconference since the pandemic wiped Alabama's spring practices off the calendar and what we at BamaInsider think it all means.
1. Will you lean more on veterans since early enrollees missed out on their first spring practice?
Saban: “I can’t say that. We’re going to lean on the people who are the most responsible to go out and do their job and be able to create value for themselves because they’re confident and understand. That could be a freshman. We’ve played a lot of freshmen around here, I think we played 19 last year and five started. I know they’re not going to have the benefit of going through spring practice, but we’ve had a lot of guys that came in the fall — Minkah (Fitzpatrick), Ronnie Harrison — we’ve had guys that weren’t here in the spring, they didn’t get here mid-year and they started as freshmen. I don’t think making those kinds of choices, decisions, whatever you want, without having legitimate information to evaluate from, that kind of speculation, we’re not going to do it and I don’t think it’s smart for anyone to do.”
Observations: Saban wants his guys to arrive in Tuscaloosa, whenever that might be, in the best shape possible. He’s not going to put a message out to all the young guys, quarterback Bryce Young for example, that they’ve already lost their position battles.
However, earlier in the teleconference, Saban himself acknowledged that “the players who benefit the most from spring practice and having these (meetings) are really the young players on the team.”
