Coach Nick Saban Talks Keeping His Team Level Headed During A Rough Season Start | Pat McAfee Show

Ladies and gentlemen, this man's team this year has been on quite a little bit of a roller coaster. Obviously, because of who he is and the program that he runs, at the beginning of the season, it's national championship every single year. They run into a little bit of adversity early. Everybody cast them aside. This team stinks. Now, just a few weeks after that, this team is now a 20-point favorite at home against an SEC team. Ladies and gentlemen, the greatest college football coach of all time, Nick Saban. How are you, Coach? Great. How are you? You guys doing good? Well, I'll tell you what, AJ's jaw is phenomenal. He's been working on it. I don't know if you've noticed that, but for me, my day got a lot better. Did you see what showed up here, Coach? I don't know if you've seen this. Roll Tide. Roll Tide. Roll Tide. Thank you for this, Coach. Looks good. Well, it makes me feel like a much better football player. You know what I mean? Because I got a scholarship to Bama. No NIL deal, although I should have asked for a Ferrari from what I've been told. That's true. And then, also, a little Roll Tide. And if we win a national championship this year, Coach, right? Hey, we just got to focus on winning the next game. No, Coach. I'm just wondering if I can make a deal now that I get a ring. Yeah. Well, you know, you got to do it one game at a time. You got to focus on the next team. You know, I think when you play games like we had last week, you want to build on that. So, you want the players to be emotionally excited about what they were able to accomplish in a difficult environment, even though we had to overcome a lot of adversity. Some of it we created ourselves. But you don't want to be relieved that you won, because I think that creates a bad emotional state that doesn't really help you build on the next game, the next team that you have to play. And every team in the SEC that you play is capable of beating you. These guys almost beat LSU. They had a chance to beat Ole Miss. So, this is a tough game that we got coming up, and we got to have the right mindset for it. All right. So, I was trying to weasel my way into a national championship ring, but since it seems like that is not the case, let's talk about your team, though. Let's do this. Because just a couple weeks ago, Coach, and we're enjoying getting to talk to you every single week and go through the season. Just a couple weeks ago, though, Alabama was dead. Nick Saban's retiring. They don't have a quarterback. They don't have anything. And I guess that's kind of what college football is, especially when the greatest of all time is the coach. Now, here we are a couple weeks later. We're ranked 11th. We're favored by 20 again. How have you been able to maintain this kind of steady mindset through the ups and downs of what outside looking in seemed like a tumultuous start to a season? You know, what I think that players really need to understand, the team needs to understand it, but every individual player needs to understand it, is, you know, it's almost like being in show business in a way. You know, you audition for a part, and you either get the part or you don't. But the next time you audition, you got to do the same thing, whether you got the part the last time or not. So whether you won the game the last time or not, because in show business, you're only as good as your last game, you're only as good as your last play. And that's certainly how it is in sports. So if players can't keep the right mindset of what they need to do to play well all the time, I mean, even when you're practicing, you know, there's pro scouts out there watching practice, whatever it is, you're either creating more value for yourself by how you're going about your work, or you're not because, you know, what players don't really understand is, you know, people are looking for reasons not to pick you. So when you don't do the right things, that's not going to help you increase your value. And the individuals on the team make the team what it is. So I want every guy on the team trying to increase his value, every day, every practice, every play, and in every game. So you asked me how I'm trying to keep the right mindset, or how we're trying to keep the right mindset. You know, that's kind of how we're trying to do it. Seems like it's working coach. Go ahead, AJ. Coach, I believe you said that you want your players to remain emotionally excited after the win last week and not relieved. It doesn't create like a great environment, I guess. What does that mean exactly? Like emotionally excited? And how do you keep them mentally dialed in? Well, I think that's, you know, what I just, you know, talked about is what you're trying to do is keep people looking forward, you know, always look forward to the next challenge. You know, learn from any failing that you had, learn from the positives that you had. But if you're going to stack positive performance, you've got to keep looking at the future, be able to self assess in terms of what do I need to do better? What do we need to do better? You know, as a team and as an individual, so that you keep improving. And you know, it's like, if you bench press 180 pounds, and your goal is to bench press 300 pounds, you don't want to stop when you get to 250. You want to keep working toward that goal and keep climbing the mountain. And, you know, that's what we are trying to get our players to, you know, be able to do. And, you know, look, outside noise is a big factor in being able to control, you know, the mindset of the team because of what they hear from other people, whether it's good or bad, how it impacts their frustration when they don't do well, and how it impacts their complacency when they do do well. So this is something that, you know, I mean, it's human nature for all of us. So you can't allow human nature to sneak in, you got to have that special mindset to try to be the best. Because, look, we're entitled to nothing. When you get up, you're entitled to nothing. You're not entitled to playing time, you're not entitled to anything. So you need to understand what you have to do to continue to try to be the best that you can be. Because that's the only thing that's going to help you because talent without discipline and ability to stay focused and execute, it's not worth anything. It's nothing. All right, so these are all things that players have to understand, coaches have to understand, everybody in the organization has to understand. Your lecture about nothing, it was like two minutes long. We watched it like five times. I absolutely love that you walk up there too and you say, all right, before you guys ask any of your shit, okay, let me just, let me go ahead. No, I understand you didn't say that. I said it about the situation. But like, it was beautiful. And every time you come on here, you say something where I become a better person. So I just want to let you know that. I become a more motivated human, more inspired human. And that whole, you want to bench press 300, you start at 180, you're 250. It's like the old adage is the enemy of great is good, right? And then you talk about how that's kind of human nature settles in. Let's talk about human nature. This is the first week where you're playing what, 11 a.m. local? And it seems like a lot of the games have been big games, primetime games. You're favored now by 20. It's an 11 a.m. game. Do you change anything during the week? So the boys are up earlier or it's Alabama football. You're expected to be up at 11 a.m. regardless. No, we just try to get the players to understand that, you know, when your feet hit the ground on Saturday, because it's an early game, you got to be ready to go. And your whole thought process to change, you got to speed it up. You don't have the same sort of routine that you normally would go through to play in an afternoon or a night game. So this is really important that players, you know, understand that. So you get off to a good start in games like this. And, you know, it's not a great time to be playing, but we're going to make the best of it. Hey, coach, 11 a.m. game, central time, mountain time had like a 10 a.m. game. And I'm just thinking about like me as a human. And obviously we've learned about me, especially with what, the way you speak. I lack a lot of discipline, a lot of motivation. It's like those early games, man, it's hard. And I'm not doing anything. I'm just kicking a ball. It was like, this feels like a practice almost, as opposed to what a game feels like. It took me a while to become mature enough to handle it. Sounds like that's your deal with the boys. Coach, Chuck Pagano has a question for you, coach. Hey, coach, how are you doing? How you doing, buddy? Good. You've been doing this a long time and it's apparent that your players love playing for you. What do you love most about coaching today's college athletes? You know, I really think coaching is teaching, you know, teaching is ability to inspire learning. The thing that I like most about coaching is relationships with the players, trying to teach them to help them to be a better version of themselves, whether it's personally, academically, or, you know, obviously in coaching, it's athletically on the field in terms of what you can help them do to get better. But I really enjoy that. I think maybe one of the most disappointing things is when you have a guy that has ability and you want him to sort of improve and take advantage of that ability that he has and the talent that God has given him. And he doesn't want it as bad as you want it. You know, that's one of the most frustrating things, I think. But I just enjoy teaching. I really do. Yeah, you were supposed to be a professor or something, but you just so happen to have a mastermind in football. You know, for players in the NFL, we see this, where especially long careers. At the beginning, I'm happy to be in the NFL. I'm getting paid. I'm living my dream. And then business settles in and you're good. You're good enough to get by. You don't really appreciate what you're doing. The walkthroughs are more of a hassle as opposed to something you look to do. The travel for the games is something you don't want to do. But then towards the end of these guys' careers, all of them kind of have a perspective change and they try to enjoy every single moment. You've done this for so long. I assume, you know, a lot of chatter outside. You probably coached for nearly 30 years, but there's a lot. Did you have a moment where you were just kind of getting by as a coach and maybe not enjoying it? And are you enjoying it now more than ever because you understand what the future potentially looks like for you? But, you know, I am enjoying it more. And I think, you know, some of that goes with the type of team that you have, the type of, you know, individual personalities that you're dealing with on the team. You've heard me talk about having energy vampires before. And, you know, those guys take all your time and attention and you don't feel like you're being able to focus your attention on the things that, you know, would actually help you get better. But I enjoy it most because of the team, the players, the relationship that we have. But each year to me is like taking a new job. You've got a new team, new leadership, new guys at new positions, and you're trying to evaluate how can we get these guys to be better individually and collectively as a group. So it is challenging. I enjoy the challenge of it. It's fun when you don't have maybe the expectation. I think the thing that is hardest is when everybody has this expectation that you're going to win every game by you using 20 points. And that's hard because, you know, sometimes you can get caught up in the expectations of it all rather than focusing on the things that you need to do to get the expectation that you want, the outcome that you want. But with this year's team, you know, it's just been all focus on, you know, what do we have to do to do the things we need to do to get a positive outcome. And they've responded and improved and gotten better. And we're not bench pressing 300 yet, but we've come a long way from 180. I love the fact that some people in the desert over there in Nevada are like, Alabama should win by 20 this weekend. And then fans of Alabama are like, yeah, we should. And then you win by like 14 and they're like, ah, you win by two touchdowns. And there's like no ease or whatever, because what a sports book said on the other side of the country, what a life you've had those expectations though, forever. AJ has some for you coach. Coach, when you win as many games as you do, we know that people come and they hired, they hire all your assistants away and they become head coaches and coordinators and things all over the place. What's your process like in finding new assistants because you've had to keep continue to replace that roster. And it seems like a lot of the coaches you hire obviously go on and have great success. But what is that process like trying to bring the right people in? Well, I think one of the things that I learned from Bill Belichick was he always had an astonishing group of young guys that were in the building. I mean, when I was in Cleveland, we had Scott Pioli, we had like three or four guys that became head coaches. We had three or four other guys feel savage, all became general managers. And these guys were like, go get the coffee guys. When they were helping me as sort of my GAs. But when you do that, and that's what I've always tried to do is have a bunch of young people, evaluate them, see them go get other jobs, and then know that you would hire them back because you know who they are. Now, one of the disadvantages of having all these guys going out and getting jobs everywhere is they hire the guys before I get a chance to, like Dan Lanning. Dan Lanning was here as a GA. He went to Memphis or someplace, got a job. I was ready to hire him. And two days before I was going to hire him, Kirby hired him. So it kind of messes up your game plan a little bit when you got all these guys out there because they kind of know who the guys that you've had in the organization are that are the good ones. And they end up snatching them up before you get a chance to. But to answer your question is, I try to keep a file on, okay, here's the best coordinators. Here's the best receiver coaches. Here's the best, you know, DB guys. And it's hard to do because the longer you're a head coach, the more displaced you get from who are the best systems. So you have to kind of depend on other people and ask a lot of questions and do a lot of research on who actually are these best guys. And sometimes you look at statistics and say, okay, they led the nation in defense. These guys are getting 500 yards a game on offense. Let me check this guy out. So it takes a lot of research to really find out because, you know, you want somebody who is knowledgeable. You want somebody who is a good communicator and a good teacher, but you also want somebody that's a good fit with the people that you already have in the organization. And that's the hardest thing to figure out when you hire people you don't know. Kirby and Dan Lennon doing okay. I'm doing a okay. As are a bunch of your assistants. You mentioned bill Belichick. Connor has a question for you. Yeah, coach with bill Belichick, obviously your relationship is well-documented, but you know, you go up to the press conference and you know, you're sharing game. You're giving kind of a lecture about the importance of nothing and bill goes up there and he actually just says nothing. Have you thought about doing that or wanted to ever just to be able to do the bill Belichick grunt, say no and get off the stage. And have you also thought about having miss Terry maybe taught to him the same way she talked to you to kind of change your whole game in the press conferences? Like Bill's done really well in his own right. So I have no, I'm in no position to be evaluate anything that he does, but I do think it's different in pro ball and in college, you know, in college, the image of the program and you have to recruit players to come to the program. So you have to have a program that's going to create value for them. So using the media as an opportunity to, you know, sell the kind of program you have, sell the things that you're trying to get accomplished to create value personally, academically and athletically, I think is important. So for people to know who you are and know what kind of teacher you are, what kind of coach you are, how you care about players, you know, that that's really, really important. So if you took that approach in college, I think it would be not so good, maybe from a public perception standpoint, in terms of what you have to do to recruit and, and to enhance the value of your program. You could get away with it if you did. But have you seen some of these video mashups of your top 10 press conference moments? Boy, you are electrifying. You are awesome. And I watched it last week. And you talked about expectations right there. A lot of it is about the expectations everybody else has. Yeah. For like, those are some of your best moments in there. We appreciate your transparency in there. You need to know that. Well, but you know, my expectations for our team are, is our team playing to their full potential? And winning or losing the game is going to be a result of that. And how close are you getting to that in terms of the individual player, as well as the team, the chemistry, the leadership, how people are playing together, but also, you know, are they executing up to their level? Because look, all these guys want to play in the NFL someday. So if you can convince them that what they're doing is creating value for their future, they're going to be more motivated to do it. And it's going to benefit the team in the long run. So, you know, that, that's my whole idea about, you know, your auditioning every time you go on the field and you need to be at your best every time you go on the field. Yeah. I think you only have like a hundred some guys in the NFL right now. That's all. Yeah. That's all. I think it's working. I think it's paying off. You got a resume. Tone has the last question for you here, coach. Yeah, coach. One of the big topics this week is coaching decisions, clock management, when to kneel the ball, when to go for it on fourth, when to punt it, knowing the overtime rules. Do you, how does that work for you guys? We watched the Notre Dame tape last week or two weeks ago when they were in a two minute drive and how much knowledge and information was over the microphones. Do you have someone dedicated to that on your staff or what's the process when you're getting into the crunch time in the fourth quarter on decision-making? Well, you know, it depends on the situation in the game. Obviously you needed to touch down. You need to field goal in terms of two minutes, but you always get in situations where like last week we're in four minute, all right, we're trying to take the air out of it and we want to kneel on the ball. And we actually, with a minute 36 to go in a game could have kneeled on the ball. So we make a first down. We don't know if the player who caught the ball, his knee was down when he caught the ball or not. So we tried to go fast and just hand the ball off and they didn't cover the receiver. So the quarterback decides to throw the ball out there. Well, the running back, we thought he was getting the ball, hit the quarterback's arm and we stopped the clock. So terrible decision, terrible clock management. But if we could have knelt on the ball on that play on first down and actually ran a clock out because somebody is in the press box who knows when we're going for two and I got it in my pocket too. But you also know, all right, they don't have any timeouts left. So how much clock can we milk by kneeling on the ball? We could have knelt on the ball. We were going to kneel on the ball after that play. We stopped the clock. So now we can't kneel on the ball. So sometimes these situations and circumstances are well-planned, you know, in terms of what you're trying to do. But then the circumstances flip the script, just like last week. Everybody's saying they might review this play, hurry up and run the next play. So we try to run a fast play and we got to be able to understand the situation so we don't do what we did. But at the same time, I understand why the guy did what he did. They didn't have a guy lined up out there on the receiver. So he thinks he's going to throw the ball to him. But it was the wrong time to do it. And we all learn from it. He'll learn from it. And, you know, but with seven seconds or less to go in the game, we got fourth down, seven seconds. Run an air ball. All right. Do you want to punt? Because the only way you can lose the game is get a pump ball. And even though, you know, we have great specialists in the world, I realize their talent whenever we get the opportunity. You know, we roll out, hold the ball for as long as we can throw it as long as we can. And you time that play. And it usually, if you have seven seconds, it'll end the game. And that's how we ended the game last week. So that's a lot of stuff. That's a lot of stuff that happens in a matter of a minute and 36 seconds of football time. I appreciate the fact, though, that you said, like, I understand why he made the decision he made because some coaches would come out and say, did something he wasn't supposed to do this 100% on him. You view it as a learning tool. You view it as a time, like, I appreciate that. Melrose, like, wait a second, you know, like that's a huge development, I think, in him as a player. What have you seen out of him that make? Cause I want to let you know, the national narrative is becoming, yeah, Melrose Heisman conversation. You know, that is, and that was not the case a few weeks back. Do you hear that? And how appreciative are you of where Melrose is right now? Well, I think his confidence relationships and understanding with his coaches of exactly what he needs to do, you know, as a player has gone way up. And I think that is what has helped his performance. I mean, the guy's a talented guy. He can throw the ball accurately down the field. He's a really good athlete. He can extend plays. He can make plays with his feet. So this progression that we kind of needed for him to just play quarterback has been really, really exponentially improving week by week. People thought we couldn't throw the ball and he threw for over 300 yards last week, which we knew we're going to have to do against A&M because of their front. And he did a good job of that. So continuing his development in all these areas, I think, is really, really important. And he's been great about it. He's had a great attitude about it. I just had a meeting with him. You know, I always meet with him at 1130, you know, on Thursday and go through the week with him and go through the plan with him. And you know, he's well prepared and very sort of appreciative of, you know, how he's developing the leadership with the other guys on the team. So all these things are real positives. Hell yeah. We love watching it. I'm enjoying going through this season with you guys. And remember, win by 45 this weekend, we're all going to be disappointed. Ladies and gentlemen, the head... Oh, that's awesome. That's your life, dude. You've earned it. You've earned it with how great you've been. Ladies and gentlemen, Coach Nick Saban. Thank you, Coach. Coach! Shakes his head. Oh, that's awesome.