Column: If You Silence Florida Gators QB Talk and Listen Closely, You Can Hear Nick Saban Cry Out

Nick Saban could be playing coy...or he could really be worried about the state of his team. Photo Courtesy: SEC

Anyone who works in sports can tell you, once you begin your career, family and friends suddenly believe you can see into the future, and they love to interrogate you about what’s going to happen during the game.

What they fail to realize is that no one tells us who is going to win (if they did, we’d all be cashing in at Vegas).

When Florida is playing a team like Florida Atlantic or South Florida, sure. I can make predictions and feel pretty good about them.

But once we approach conference play in the SEC, let alone approach a game like Saturday’s, I tend to get pretty tight-lipped so as not to look dumber than I already do. But naturally, due to the game’s magnitude, the questions and requests for my predictions have been hurled at me.

And the best I’ve been able to come up with is this: The Gators were within six points of the Crimson Tide during last season’s SEC Championship game. And on paper, it appears as though Florida has improved in 2021, while Alabama has taken an uncharacteristic step backwards.

But there hasn’t been much buzz about that. Until I finally saw a tidbit on it on Thursday.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t familiar with 247Sports’ Josh Pate before Thursday afternoon. But after he echoed my thoughts on the Florida-Alabama game this Saturday, he’s made a fan out of me.

“If I were to ask you what’s the biggest storyline, if you will, of this, you would say the Florida quarterback situation,” Pate said. “And I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I think that’s vastly overshadowing something else that matters here.

“And that’s for two weeks now, Nick Saban has been telegraphing to you that he is not totally thrilled with where his team is. You’re ignoring it, as you’re prone to do when they’re blowing folks out.”

Following Alabama’s 48-14 thumping of Mercer last Saturday came a tense press conference with a noticeably frustrated Nick Saban.

The Crimson Tide offense opened the game with a three-and-out.

“I mean if it stinks, it stinks. It smells bad for everybody. Did it smell bad for you? Yeah. I mean, what do you want me to do, make excuses for them? We did a poor job of blocking. They did some movements up front and we didn't sustain blocks. So we didn't have much success running the ball,” Saban said of the Alabama offense. “It stopped ourselves four times in the first half with a dropped pass on third down, a dropped pass that would have been a big-play pass, and two penalties. One penalty brought back a touchdown. One penalty stopped a drive. So, I don't know how many possessions we had the first half, but that's four right there where we stopped ourselves.”

The Crimson Tide struggled mightily with penalties in last Saturday’s win in Tuscaloosa.

Through the first half of football, Alabama committed six penalties for 70 yards. By game’s end, the Tide had totaled nine penalties for 95 yards. Which, in Saban’s book, nearly directly translates to a score.

“I don't care how you cut the mustard in a football game, a hundred yards usually equals seven points. So if you just had 100 yards in penalties you just gave the other team seven points because you gave up that much field position,” Saban said. “So when you have a 25-yard return and you have a 10-yard penalty, that's a 35-yard penalty. You just keep adding those up and you see what you're giving up."

According to Pate, Saban’s frustration is practically a cry-out for others to take notice that the Crimson Tide isn’t invincible.

“There have been times before where they have been blowing folks out and Nick Saban cannot get anyone’s attention, tries as he might, because it might take a loss, unfortunately, sometimes to get his team’s attention.

“He is doing that again. He is telling you even though they’re good… I think they’re the number one team in the country right now. But number one is relative.”

According to Pate, he and 247Sports ran the 2021 Alabama team through a model and algorithm and simulated a game against the 2020 Alabama team. And this year’s team came up as 11.5-point underdogs.

“This team trails significantly where that last year’s team left off,” Pate said. And so they’re vulnerable is what I’m telling you.

“But, as has been the case with Bama in years past, it takes them tasting their own blood and you seeing them taste their own blood in a lot of cases, for you to believe they’re anything other than this death star that’s marching towards another national championship in which they’d just beat everyone by four touchdowns.”