Nick Saban seemed like he was seconds away from yelling, “Rat poison!” at the media as he gained momentum in a quick rant Wednesday during his press conference.
Going into Alabama’s Week 9 game against Arkansas, the Crimson Tide will be without starting quarterback and Heisman Trophy candidate Tua Tagovailoa, who was injured last weekend in the team’s win against Tennessee. Tagovailoa had successful surgery Sunday, as Saban previously noted, but the timeline for his return to the field is unclear.
And because of that, Mac Jones is expected to start for Alabama against the Razorbacks, but Saban also said earlier this week that Tua’s younger brother, freshman Taulia Tagovailoa, could be an option.
So naturally, that led to follow-up questions about Taulia possibly playing, and Saban did not like that, presumably because it implied that Alabama is going to wreck Arkansas as a 31.5-point favorite. But the Crimson Tide coach is famously not a fan of those types of assumptions or anything that could give his players the impression that an easy win lies ahead.
And that led to the first really good quintessential Nick Saban rant we’ve had since August.
The reasonable question was: “Will there be an effort to get Taulia into the game just to expedite his progression?” And to that, Saban said:
“You know, we’re focused on winning the game, aight. So we’re gonna try to win the game, and we’re going to play the best players that we can play to win the game. And we’re not assuming that it’s going to be an easy game, aight, and we’re not assuming that we’ll have [an] opportunity just to play anybody that wants play, to expedite anything except winning the game.
“So we’re going to play everybody who can expedite winning the game! That’s what we’re going to do. So I don’t think anybody should expect us to do anything else.”
And then he promptly left the podium.
And with that, it seems like as good a time as any to recall Saban’s infamous “rat poison” moment from a 2017 press conference after beating Texas A&M. Basically, the six-time national championship coach was sick of all the positive headlines and stories about his team is poisonous to his players.
Gotta love a good Nick Saban rant.
Alabama plays Arkansas at home at 7 p.m. ET on Saturday on ESPN.
