Nick Saban on LSU’s fall: ‘You have to try to avoid complacency’
We all know the history of Nick Saban as a head coach. After five years as the head coach of Michigan State, he left for LSU. He led them to a national championship before heading to the NFL. After two years at the professional level, he came back to college with Alabama in 2007. Since that move, he has proven to be one of, if not the best coach in the sport. He owns seven national championship trophies, six coming at Alabama.
When it comes to certain coaches in their profession, you listen to what they have to say. Saban is certainly one of those coaches. He was asked about the issues at LSU on Tuesday, here is what he had to say.
“I think you have to try to avoid complacency when people have success”, Saban said. “Sometimes they get a little complacent on doing things right. I don’t know enough about their situation to be commenting on their situation. I’m just talking about the circumstances that we’ve gone through here. When you have good leadership on your team and you have good maturity on your team, usually you can sort of avoid some of those pitfalls. But you have to have players there to also step up and be ready to play because you’re always going to lose a whole bunch of good players. They lost a whole bunch of good players after they won the championship.”
Complacency. There is certainly a lot of complacency in Baton Rouge, especially when you look at the head coach. He won a national championship in 2019 but looks like a head coach that caught lightning in a bottle with Joe Burrow, Joe Brady, Dave Aranda, and 13 players drafted in the 2020 NFL draft. Orgeron doesn’t look like a coach that knows how to get back to that level.
The other key statement made by Saban that rings true, leadership and maturity. Who on this football team would you consider to be a leader? It is difficult to find that leader on offense. On defense, you could say Andre Anthony, but he is lost for the season. Perhaps you could say Damone Clark. The lack of clear leadership and lack of maturity certainly points to the issues going on in Baton Rouge.
