Top quotes from Nick Saban, Alabama players following Alabama’s win over Georgia

I think I couldn’t be prouder of a bunch of guys on a team that has come so far from where we were second, third game of the season. I think this is a great example for a lot of people who want to be successful in terms of the perseverance that these guys showed, the character they had to overcome adversity, the resiliency that they played with.

They’re truly a team. Everybody’s together. Everybody trusts and respects the principles and values of the organization and program and buy into them. They’re all responsible for their own self-determination, which means they can go do their job.

So I couldn’t be prouder of a bunch of guys, the progress that they made, the way we compete.

Georgia has an outstanding team – outstanding team. I think our team wanted to prove all year. There was a lot of naysayers early in the year. We wanted to show people what we could accomplish and what we could do. There wasn’t a better stage to do it, to play the No. 1 team in the country who had won 29 games in a row.

That’s the end point that says you really got where you wanted to go, you were able to go out there and compete in a game, play for 60 minutes, which it took all 60 minutes, and to win the SEC championship, which is in my opinion really, really significant.

It means a lot to me. This is a tough conference. I mean, we have, like, five teams that are ranked in the top 15. We got to play each other. I think we played four out of the five.

I know you’re going to ask me, so I might as well just get to it. Having anticipation is something that’s important to being a good coach. Not that I think I’m a good coach (smiling).

But the message that I would send is, we won the SEC. We beat the No. 1 team in the country, which everybody thought on the committee was the No. 1 team in the country. They won 29 straight games.

If we needed to do something to pass the eye test, I guess that probably contributed to it significantly. If you really want the four best teams to compete, the four most deserving teams that have progressed throughout the season. We’re not the same team we were when we played Texas. We’re not the same team when we played South Florida.

I don’t think we should be considered as that team right now. I think people should look at the whole body of work in terms of what the team was able to accomplish and what they were able to do. I think this team is one of the four best teams, one of the teams that’s deserving to be in the Playoff.

I disagreed with them before. I disagreed last year. So I’ll respect ’em. I know they have a tough job. I know there’s a lot of good teams.

But I’m just speaking up for our guys on our team who have busted their butt all year long to accomplish what they’ve accomplished. I think that needs to be recognized.

Singular focus. That’s the biggest motto we had going into the game, singular focus and doing our job.

It’s all about response. The biggest thing that we have on this team that contributes to any success is the FAMILY acronym: Forget about me, I love you. I think we do a really good job about that. It was about singular focus each and every drive.

The main thing that Coach Steele has instilled in us is holding us accountable every day in practice, having the right practice habits, going in practice how you play. Everything that we do before the games, everything, it’s just all a display of what we do in practice. You just practice how you play.

Other than the one big play that we gave up, we didn’t play well early. The first drive, we were sort of out of sorts. We settled down and played pretty well. We gave up the one big play over on their sidelines, which led to a field goal. Then we got really bad field position on the punt return. It wasn’t a very good punt. Guy did a good job. Put two returners back so they could get the ball fielded. They hit us.

I thought they did a pretty good job. I think Georgia has a really good quarterback and really good skill guys. I thought they did a pretty good job of limiting their big plays.

Kool-Aid has a concussion. He goes in concussion protocol. We’ll figure out how bad it is, how long it takes, when he’ll be clear. All the testing mechanisms that we have right now I think are really beneficial to players not getting multiple concussions.

Hopefully we’ll do our — our medical staff has always done a really good job of protecting the players when these things occur.

The biggest thing about this team is we know there’s unfinished business. We want to improve and get 1% better each and every day.

We have to acknowledge the journey we’ve been on. I can only be just complimentary of the guys in the locker room because end of the day when people doubted us, we continued to work hard. We just trusted in the coaching staff to continue to push us each and every day. We have a good leader like Dallas here right next to me that pushes the offense as we compete on the practice field.

There’s a lot of elements that allows our team to keep pushing towards the final step. But we’re nowhere near the finish line. We’re constantly trying to get better.

Thank you. I do appreciate what you all do. You create a lot of interest. I know sometimes I get criticized for being a guy that doesn’t like the press, but I really do like you. I like what you do.

You do a lot to give our players a lot of positive self-gratification, and you also create a lot of interest in our game. I think that’s important. So thank you for that.