• How Tide players are receiving Saban’s ‘next-play’ philosophy •

• 2023 Bama Football 2023 •  Tuscaloosa, AL Alabama football really wasn’t far off from achieving its ultimate goals last season. A few plays against Tennessee and LSU went differently and suddenly the Crimson Tide wasn’t watching the Tigers play Georgia in the SEC title game before UA was left out of the College Football Playoff.. But those plays did happen, and Alabama had to settle for a Sugar Bowl trip. Entering 2023, Nick Saban wanted to make sure those few plays didn’t happen again. "You never know when those plays are coming up, so you’ve got to be prepared to play every play, regardless of the circumstances and the situation of the game,” Saban said Thursday in his first press conference of preseason camp. “You’ve got to execute, you’ve got to get 11 guys to execute. So who you are, what you do, sort of defines you on Saturday." Emphasizing the process over results is nothing new for Saban. He brought it up at SEC Media Days in July before his statements on Friday. Linebacker Deontae Lawson explained what the philosophy looked like on the practice field. “Just playing play-by-play,” he said Friday. “Even if you make a mistake, just next-play mentality and being ready for the next play.” Saban used video illustrations to hammer the point home to his players. The Crimson Tide watched a package of highlights Wednesday, showing how it lost or won games last season. “What are you going to learn from that?” Saban said he asked the team. According to Lawson, the point was well-taken. “That’s just showing that every play matters and you have to finish the game,” the linebacker said Friday. “No matter what the score is or things like that.” He said the group is eager to prove what it has learned over the course of the offseason. • ROLLING WITH THE TIDE •