Every Thursday throughout this college football season, Alabama head coach Nick Saban has been appearing on the Pat McAfee Show to talk about his team, college football as a whole, the upcoming/previous game, and whatever else comes up.
With it being Rose Bowl week, Saban and McAfee chatted about the matchup against Michigan and what Saban believes his team needs to do to be able to win:
https://twitter.com/PatMcAfeeShow/status/1740422995733287134
McAfee asked Saban about what his message is to the team coming off the huge win against Georgia but with a much bigger game coming up, and Saban talked about a classic principle of his: to finish.
“The idea of finishing to gain the respect that you have worked for all year long. You really get no receipt of that unless you finish strong,” Saban said.
“You’ve worked your butt off to get to the playoff and now you’ve gotta finish, and if you don’t do that you don’t get any receipt for what you’ve accomplished all year long. The players know that we’ve gotta finish what we started and they’ve responded well.”
Saban was also asked to describe how he sees this Michigan team, and he praised their physicality.
“I think they are very capable of being a smash mouth team if they want to, they use a lot of different personnel groups to get in big people which is something we have to adapt to. But we want to be a physical team too. I do think when a team can run the ball on you, it’s a little bit of a helpless feeling to not be able to stop that.”
Michael Brauner is a Senior Sports Analyst and Contributing Writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @MBraunerWNSP