Nick Saban on 2022 Mentality: "This Team Doesn't Have Any Complainers"

Speaking to the media following the Crimson Tide's first scrimmage of 2022, Saban noted that he has not seen a lot of negative energy on the team thus far.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — It's no small secret that Alabama football had its own fair share of internal issues last season.

Vocal complaints from players and poor leadership are just two of the issues that Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban repeatedly cited over the course of the 2021 season. The internal issues caused Saban to rant multiple times — including a couple of times on live radio — but the issues persisted.

Alongside injuries, lack of leadership and a mentality that Saban would likely refer to as 'The Poor Mes' permeated the Crimson Tide in 2021. After Alabama's 33-18 loss against Georgia in the 2022 College Football Playoff title game, a question that was on the minds of many fans was 'Will next year have the same difficulties?'

Saturday marked the Crimson Tide's first scrimmage game of the spring — the first of three, with the final being the 2022 A-Day Scrimmage Game on April 16. After the scrimmage, Saban stepped in front of the media for questions, and one of his answers seemingly answered Alabama fans' questions from last year.

That is, at least for now.

"This team's been really good," Saban said. "This team doesn't have any complainers, guys just do what they're coached to do. They work hard. We don't have a lot of negative guys on this team, and we have some real positive leadership, which I think it always important. And hopefully we can build on that and that will be something that's an asset to this team. It's easy to start that way, it's more difficult to sustain.

"Hopefully this team will be able to sustain it, and that will help us in terms of our development when the fall rolls around."

That sounds like good news coming from the highest-ranked expert on team morale and leadership. With the media being unable to view practices or scrimmages this season, Saban serves as both eyes and ears for everyone wanting to garner a peak behind the Crimson Tide's curtain of secrecy.

Saban isn't the first to mention growing leadership and reducing the amount of complaints voiced by players this year. During his first spring press conference, linebacker Will Anderson Jr. also voiced the same concerns that he had last year, adding that things are on the up-and-up.

“I think that’s something that we really lacked last year, just really good, strong leadership,” Anderson said. “I think the leadership group this year, so far, we’ve done a really good job of getting everybody to be bought in to the standard and everything that’s going on here.”

Regardless, it seems that the tune in Tuscaloosa is finally hanging after a year of behavior typically not exhibited by a Nick Saban-coached Crimson Tide team.

Gallery: Nick Saban at Alabama's First Scrimmage of 2022