re: Not that anyone will be surprised by this...

Without Bryce, you are looking at a 4 loss bama team

BOB ruined the Texans so we sent him to y’all.

I mean until recruiting really takes a hit I don't really see it just yet. A Few adjustments in the off season they'll be right back in the thick of things. Unless the talent they're bringing in has been miss evaluated I think it has to do more with his staff.

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big clue that something is not quite right is how hard Bama had to go to the portal.

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These days I’m not sure every program is going to have to deal with the portal. Additions and subtractions.

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it isn't just that the players have changed. The entire demeanor of the program seems different.

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NIL and the transfer portal have done a lot to turn college football into minor league NFL. Along with that come the arrogance, the attitudes, and the selfish behavior of young men full of more testosterone than wisdom.

Saban left the NFL because there was no way to exert any control or to direct of a bunch of youthful millionaires who were peaking early in life. On a college campus he could mold those young men into the players he needed to accomplish the goal of regular championships.

Whether for better or worse remains to be seen, but times have changed and so has the game. I won't say that the game has left Saban behind, but the discipline shown by this team on the field and the number of penalties incurred is indicative of a team that doesn't respect its coach. It's not that Saban doesn't deserve or earn that respect, but too much leeway has been given college players whose physical prowess is peaking long before their mental attributes have fully matured and they don't want to think that an old "boomer" can teach them anything about the game.

The obvious lack of discipline on the Alabama team will soon become apparent throughout the league in college athletics. It's just that it's easy to see it first on a Saban led team that has long been renowned for discipline and attention to detail.

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The program is currently on a pretty clear downward trajectory. He's got this offseason to fix it in terms of staff, but I'm not sure he thinks the defensive coaching is an issue, incredibly. We'll find out I guess. BoB is going to be gone, though, at least.

But it's more than that. The program isn't tough anymore, isn't disciplined and isn't built around faceless men who perform like robots. He talks about mental pressures and anxiety, talks about how hard the kids are working and how bad they want to win, discusses personal value, etc etc. I dunno if it's the age thing or the NIL thing or what, but the entire structure of the program has changed and the results are pretty clearly showing that the change was negative. I'm not sure he has the ability to get that back at this point in his career.

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Brutal honesty from the NY Post

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Alabama won’t even sniff the playoff this year, with two conference losses in the same season for just the second time since 2011.

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the most disappointing season of Nick Saban’s dominance in TuscaLucy

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and the coup de gràce:

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Really, Alabama is fortunate it only has two losses. It was outplayed by mediocre Texas, sans starting quarterback Quinn Ewers in a narrow road win. It nearly lost at home to three-win Texas A&M. That high-scoring loss at Tennessee doesn’t look as good after the Volunteers were manhandled by Georgia on Saturday. Had Alabama escaped LSU, and somehow run the table to earn a trip to the SEC title game, it would’ve only been setting itself up to get destroyed by the far better and deeper Bulldogs.

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