Grumpy Alabama Returns to the SEC
HOOVER - If Nick Saban is totally happy with Tua Tagovailoa and his program you wouldn’t know it from Alabama’s appearance here today.
Clemson. Tua. And Saban being Saban… happiness didn’t seem to ooze from the Tide on Wednesday. Welcome to this annual summer extravaganza.
“Tua is a great competitor, so he's going to try to make a great play every play. And sometimes those things have worked out extremely well. And other times they've led to some disasters,” Saban said. “Having a little better judgment about when to say when can be an asset from a health standpoint as well as eliminate negative play standpoint.”
Of those disasters that Saban references, the biggest one last year came in the National Championship as the Tigers set off a bomb that exploded on the Tide.
There were some curious strategies used in that contest. There was the fake field goal when the entire world knew it was coming. There was Trevor Lawrence. There was Bama not scoring the second half…
Not great. It was not the Alabama we are used to seeing.
And that loss wasn’t just about Alabama not playing well here and there. It was about them getting dominated on the perimeter and ground down in the middle. Tua, who had played so well for so long, wasn’t himself after getting banged up in the LSU win.
It felt like Tua and the Tide were not themselves from November on. Remember Bama being tied with The Citadel at the half? That nearly broke the internet. Tua was even less effective against the Dawgs. He looked completely human against Clemson.
The star QB threw this out there for public consumption on Wednesday:
“I know this sounds weird,” Tua admitted. “I think it was good that we lost (to Clemson). What can you learn when you keep winning? You can’t learn as much.”
No, you don’t learn as much, but you do get the trophy. Georgia must be the smartest program out there, because it sure seems the Dawgs have learned a lot these last few years.
Saban said today that his program needs to get back to the basics - more team; less individual. To translate: more trophies; less learning.
“Whether or not people were worried about personal outcomes more than team outcomes, it's always hard to judge that,” he said leading up to this: “It seems like we had a lot of distractions at the end of the year.”
The SEC Championship. Christmas. Recruiting. Or other stuff? Alabama is finding out that winning it all isn’t as easy as it used to be.