Saban: Alabama has overachieved this year

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The question was straightforward, but Nick Saban needed an extra second to come up with an answer.

What's this particular Alabama team's best quality?

His response was relatively out of character. He led with "the E word."

"To be honest," Saban said, "I think this team has kind of exceeded expectations."

How does a team that won the previous year's national championship, another one two years earlier and entered the season ranked No. 2 in most major polls exceed expectations?

"If you look at all the players that we lost last year, the leadership that we lost, the injuries that we've had, the schedule that we played, the adversity that had to be overcome, the new roles that so many people had on this team, the young players who had opportunities to really kind of show what they could do and how quickly they would mature to be able to do their job in a way that would give us a chance to be successful as a team, I'm really proud of what this team actually was able to accomplish together as a group," Saban said.

"The team chemistry, the positive energy that they had, the responsibility that everyone has kind of taken for their own self-determination and sort of doing their job, and the way this team has worked and worked hard together to try to become a very good football team and to try to improve."

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