Nick Saban opening statement:  August 15, 2023 - video Dailymotion

Alabama head coach Nick Saban talks about his message for the team at this point in fall c

Transcript

00:00 So the message pretty much is you kind of do an assessment

00:05 after first scrimmage, even though that was just

00:09 our third practice in pads.

00:13 But I think the question you ask is, what percentage

00:17 of the guys are playing winning football?

00:20 And are you willing to do the things

00:25 you need to do to invest in yourself so that you are doing

00:30 the things that you need to do so that you can improve?

00:34 Because the tendency is, especially in the conditions

00:36 that we're in, is it's very easy to endure practice.

00:41 Do what you have to do to get by.

00:42 Don't really focus.

00:43 Don't really play fast.

00:46 And if you ask everybody in the room, do you want to win?

00:49 They'd all say, yeah, we want to win.

00:50 But are you willing to do the things you need to do to win?

00:54 And you've got to get out of your comfort zone.

00:55 Some people would say you've got to make sacrifices

00:58 and do things so that you can improve.

01:00 But the way I'd rather say it is you've

01:02 got to invest in yourself in terms

01:05 of doing the things that are going to help you

01:08 on and off the field be the best player you can be.

01:11 And the bottom line is just to ask yourself,

01:14 can your teammates trust you to do your job?

01:17 And that should be everybody's goal

01:19 in terms of what they strive to do

01:21 and what they're trying to do so that they--

01:23 that's how you compete to play.

01:25 That's how you compete for playing time.

01:28 So I like the attitude of the team so far.

01:31 I think we've got a lot of guys trying to do that.

01:33 I think we probably need a critical mass of people

01:37 to continue to improve so that we

01:39 can have enough guys that can play winning football.

01:42 So that's our challenge as coaches.

01:45 And that's each and every individual's challenge

01:48 to be able to invest in themselves so we can do that.

01:51 [BLANK_AUDIO]