re: Bama fans…are you upset at Saban’s timing?

There is no good time to retire in the free agency era. It is treated like the school fired the coach, so your entire roster gets opened up to be pillaged. Alabama probably handled this about as efficiently as you can in the hopes of re-recruiting the roster. Seriously, 48 hours from retirement to hiring the replacement is insane. You can do that when your coach is a retirement risk. Hard to do that when you haven't been prepping for a termination for years.

Alabama was going to lose a few more guys that Saban tried to keep on the roster like Bond, Niblack, Ricks, Amos, and a few others. That's just the reality of coaching transitions in the free agency era. The transfers before Saban retired was largely the typical bottom quarter of the roster Alabama has been accustom to seeing each Winter. It is encouraging that there wasn't a mass exodus the day after Saban retired but instead a slow trickle of onesies and twosies. Of course, plenty of time for it to get worse.