HOOVER, Ala. — When Alabama walked out of the Georgia Dome last December, a national championship was in sight.
The Crimson Tide took their 24th Southeastern Conference Championship with an easy 42-13 victory over SEC East champion Missouri.
In head coach Nick Saban’s mind, his team didn’t bring the same focus to practice leading up to the College Football Playoff that it had all season. It showed as the Tide were beaten by eventual national champion Ohio State 42-35. Saban thinks it has something to do with the National Football League returning draft grades in the middle of December for underclassmen.
“I just felt like, in our experience last year, our team chemistry from the SEC Championship game to the playoff game was affected by something,” said Saban, who will start his ninth year at Alabama this fall. “We’re trying to get ready for a game, and all of a sudden, a guy finds out he’s a first round draft pick or a guy that thought he was a first round draft pick finds out he’s not a first round draft pick, and we’re trying to get ready to play a playoff game.”
Saban said there were six underclassmen on the team that got feedback from the NFL on their draft status and it may have made them tentative and played not to get hurt. He would like to see that the Dec. 15 date be moved back until the postseason is over and he wants to move back the Jan. 15 deadline to declare for the NFL Draft.
“I think that it would be better not to submit that information to a player until he has finished competing in college,” Saban said.
The Tide overcame a 23-17 loss to Ole Miss in Oxford in the early part of the season to win the SEC West. That included a 25-20 victory over No. 1 Mississippi State.
The loss to Ohio State put things in perspective from some of the Alabama players.
“It’s always just finish. Finish, finish and we haven’t done that the last two years, with losses to Oklahoma and Ohio State,” senior running back Kenyan Drake said. “Each team played against their formidable opponents and they did their job to beat us. We accept that, but we also know there were things in those games that we did to also help us lose those games too.”
Drake missed a good portion of last season after suffering a broken leg against Ole Miss on Oct. 4.
Alabama fans have come accustomed to seeing their team win not only SEC championships, but also national championships. The last time the Tide won a national championship was 2012, their 15th in school history.
“We’re not allowed to have a bad season because the fans will let you know when you’re playing badly,” senior linebacker Reggie Ragland said, who was second on the team a season ago with 95 total tackles. “We have to have the right mindset at all times because the players that came before us instilled something that we have to keep fighting and keep going on.”
Alabama will have to find a new quarterback for the second year in a row. Fifth-year senior Blake Sims took over the starting job last season and showed that his patience paid off. He passed for 3,487 yards and 28 touchdowns to help pace the Tide offense.
Saban doesn’t know who will be the starting quarterback this season, but he wants to see somebody “take the bull by the horns” in fall camp.
Senior offensive lineman Ryan Kelly says there are about five candidates competing for the job, and he likes all five of them.
“They are great guys, great leaders in the locker room. We like to be around them. Regardless of who ends up starting when we are in Dallas, I know they are going to do a great job, be a great team leader and have great energy,” said Kelly who will get his last year underway at Alabama against Wisconsin.
Senior Jake Coker seems to be the front-runner to be the man under center. The Florida State transfer competed with Sims last season for the starting job and saw action in seven games. He completed 38-of-59 passes for 403 yards and four touchdowns.
“I think he’s made a tremendous amount of improvement,” Saban said. “I think that a better understanding, better knowledge of the system, better knowledge of what we expect, what’s expected of him in our offense are all things that have contributed to his confidence and his performance level.
“We just want to see him continue to develop the kind of consistency to make the kind of decisions and judgments to process the information quickly and make quick decisions that allows him to play winning football at his position. We’re encouraged by all the things that he’s done to this point.”
Ben Wait is a sports writer for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @bcwait
Ben Wait reports on Mississippi State University sports for The Dispatch.
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