The Tide is coming off two losses against Missouri. What happened to Nick Saban’s juggernaut?

When Nick Saban retired as Alabama coach in January, the university lost not only a football coach but also a unique business asset. Saban was an enrollment magnet who transformed the school’s student body by attracting foreign students to Tuscaloosa. He had the same impact on the players who flocked to Alabama in a way that became self-fulfilling over the years. If a five-star recruit wanted to play in the NFL, Saban was the ideal person to get him there. In recent years, as outside groups have been allowed to pay players and recruits, a much-discussed “Saban discount” has taken hold in Alabama. The Crimson Tide weren’t thought to tower above the rest of college football in terms of spending on outside backers for their players, but Saban’s appeal ensured that the Tide always had the best roster, or very close to it, anyway.

Seven games into new coach Kalen DeBoer’s tenure, Alabama has lost something else: its attitude. The Tide lost at Tennessee last Saturday, going 5-2 in its first seven games, a level of infamy the program hadn’t experienced since 2007, Saban’s first year. A game this weekend against Missouri threatens a catastrophic third loss before the end of October. The unthinkable has become conceivable as the Tide considers the high possibility of missing the newly expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. A loss at Vanderbilt two weeks ago was perhaps the most shocking in program history. This latest loss at Tennessee State wasn’t nearly as surprising, both because the Volunteers are an SEC contender and because the nation’s view of Alabama has soured following Vanderbilt’s failure. For now, Alabama is not the Alabama you came to know.

What went wrong? Not the roster itself. Immediately after Saban’s retirement, the Tide lost some top players but avoided a mass exodus. Recruiting ratings say DeBoer’s first team, made up mostly of Saban’s players, is the most talented in college football. No one of any reputation expected Bama to stay Saban That’s good for good, because that would mean winning about one in three national championships over time. But a fall shouldn’t come so quickly as Saban was a top-notch roster and a reputable coach. DeBoer has achieved nothing but wins in his previous head coaching stints, most recently leading Washington to the national championship game in his second year in the job.

Lacking talent, Alabama has faltered in other ways. Instead, the team has victimized itself in its two previous losses by doing a lot of what football coaches would call “stupid shit.” The Tide’s first seven games without Saban — but with a Saban-like roster — highlighted what a difference Saban was, in ways that went beyond ensuring Bama always had the best players .

The loss to Tennessee was a result of Alabama’s mistakes. Quarterback Jalen Milroe threw one of the most horrific interceptions of the season in the first half, lobbing the ball from the 3-yard line straight to a defensive back in the end zone. The throw was an amateur mistake — the kind Milroe might have made early in the 2023 season, when he struggled mightily before developing into one of the most effective quarterbacks in the country. (He threw two interceptions in his last eight games after throwing four of them in the first five.) This year, under a new head coach and offensive coordinator, Milroe has already matched last season’s six interceptions in his first seven games.

There were numerous other mental mistakes last weekend. The Tide’s penalties included two false starts, a delay of game, an intentional game suspension, an illegal substitution and a devastating personal foul on defenseman Kendrick Law after a play had ended. This decision was not a good one, as a Tennessee player initiated a small confrontation with Law and got away scot-free. But officials tend to catch the second man in a scramble, not the first, and the 15 yards against Alabama turned into a fourth-and-7, and the game ended in a fourth-and-22. Running back appeared on that play Justice Haynes was given a blocking order, making a near-impossible conversion even less possible.

The mood in Alabama is so dark that fans and media are even finding mental errors where none exist. Earlier this week, there was a whole news cycle about some wide receivers who were uninvolved in a game and imitated a basketball shot while standing off to the side. Alabama’s offensive coordinator later stated that they were ordered to do this, perhaps to distract the defense on a play where they had no other job. It’s jarring to see a fan base so accustomed to success forced to deal with the kind of silliness that Bama typically eludes.

Alabama fans will probably be okay at some point. But the defense might not. It is ranked 19th^Th in the country according to SP+, an opponent-adjusted efficiency statistic, the worst ranking in more than a decade. (That’s still pretty good, but this is Alabama.) The Vanderbilt loss was the program’s biggest defensive embarrassment in many years, not only because the Tide couldn’t stop Vanderbilt, but also because of the on-field meltdown that occurred when the Tide were struggling. Senior safety Malachi Moore, a program manager, later apologized for a scene in which he kicked a ball in frustration and appeared to refuse to be substituted.

It’s not like Alabama never lost its center of gravity when Saban was in charge. The Tide has had several losing streaks in its rare moments, including a handful in the Iron Bowl game with Auburn alone. My personal favorite was the moment when Auburn used a little substitution trick to convince Alabama to call a game-losing illegal substitution penalty. Barely a second later, Alabama lost the ability to make a playoff score or take a snap from center to quarterback as Auburn stormed to victory. The reality of being more talented than everyone else (sometimes aside from Georgia or Ohio State) is that every loss meant Bama was definitely missing his best abilities. This didn’t happen as often under Saban, however, as he never performed this poorly in two out of three weeks. And in fact, Alabama played just as badly in a win over South Carolina between their two losses to Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

Long distance, Alabama will be fine. Saban’s reign ensured that the Tide will have a lasting financial advantage over almost everyone else, even the other red-blooded football schools. Financial advantages can be wasted, but Alabama plays in a small pool. Saban’s enduring gift to the program is that Bama will never be more than one good coach or a few good recruiting classes away from victory. At this moment, Alabama could still get hot and sneak into the playoffs at 10-2.

Then again, the same goes for Ole Miss. Right now, Alabama is a normal, flawed team with a lot of talent. In college football, a sport that is inherently chaotic, there are no perfectly assembled machines. There are only powerful devices with different degrees of looseness of the bolts. In addition to everything else Saban represented at Alabama, it became clear how much of his brilliance lay in quality control. Without him, Alabama is more talented than anyone else, but it turns out it’s just as easy break.