Nick Saban isn’t defending the Alabama Crimson Tide at all. The legendary Tide coach left the building and moved on to broadcasting last year, but he remains relevant in the college football world. He sees he analyses, and he pinpoints the minute nitty-gritty of the system. When it comes to the current standing of his former home, the veteran didn’t hesitate to withstand the fans’ emotions. Nick Saban still has a strong tie to Alabama, but he is stronger with football itself. So, you can do anything but expect anything sugar-coated from the quintessential ever-poker-faced coach. He passively dished a backhanded to Kalen DeBoer and the squad, and guess what? The most painful thing as a Tide fan is you can’t even blame him for spitting facts.

Saban has served for decades as the Tide’s longtime head coach, leading the team to an unprecedented legacy worth engraving in history. He has literally revolutionized the state from an age-old institutional failure to the unfathomable record of seven national championships. The only bad thing about his tenure was it was too premium to follow through for any successor on the line. DeBoer took the bump on himself and broke the sweat to fit the shoes, but failed miserably. After a back-and-forth season, Alabama is now nowhere in the playoff bubble. Blame it on a tragic night in Norman last week or blame it on the team’s over-outcome-focused approach as the veteran ex-coach did.

Saban, 73, has only one word to describe the current college football teams’ downturn, and that is chaos, which stemmed from a lack of focus in the present. ”Playoff has been a great thing for college football, but I also think the playoffs have made people more outcome-oriented if a coach stands up and talks about getting into the playoff and you got to go to Oklahoma and play I am just using Alabama as an example, you got beat Auburn and the iron bowl and your focus needs to be on what do I have to do to play well in the game that I am playing” the College GameDay crew threw shades in the air, but if you know, you know who’s the first to catch.

He’s clearly side-eying Alabama for the embarrassing position of the season’s end. It’s undeniable that it was a hard pill for DeBoer to deliver with the huge chip on his shoulder (Nick Saban comparison) in his first year, but all Saban had to make a point of was his lack of seriousness in practice, maybe.

”Those are kind of lack of concentration things that come from not having the right mindset. That means you didn’t approach it right in practice for that week, then when you show up for the game and you think you’re just going to show up and win, it just doesn’t happen that way,” the Bama trailblazer kept his shot up front during the Pat McAfee show.

While whether or not a better effort and leadership from DeBoer would do better for Bama is a subject to debate, Kalen DeBoer didn’t try to cover up the mistake they made against the Sooners.

Kalen DeBoer contradicts Nick Saban’s passive ‘less-prepared’ allegation 

The loss marked Alabama’s third on the season, but the costly woes it gave to the Tide took them out of the College Football Playoff race, despite the new 12-team format broadening the room. Early contradicting Saban’s less prepared point, DeBoer said it was an extremely well-planned, well-worked match-up. But the bottom line is they couldn’t deliver when they needed it the most.

He marked the loss as uncharacteristic and put most of the blame on the slow start part. The massive turnovers allowed the opponent to take a relaxed breath. With a fiery run game, the Sooners did the rest. DeBoer termed it frustrated, disappointing, and every somber word in his dictionary but couldn’t change the fact that the Bama fell flat on the expectation. 

But ahead of the Iron Bowl game, the coach sees a point in relentlessly getting better in their ways no matter what. Even if a win doesn’t get them a chance to sniff a playoff bid, a loss will look more detrimental on DeBoer’s tenure in Tularosa. Saban’s ‘ focus on the now theory’ can do him some help to retain the prestige margin.