The Tide plays Missouri after two losses. Whatever happened to Nick Saban's juggernaut?

When Nick Saban retired from coaching Alabama in January, the university not only lost a football coach, but also a unique business asset. Saban was an enrollment magnet who transformed the school's student population by attracting out-of-state students to Tuscaloosa. He had the same effect on 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 when outside groups were allowed to pay players and recruits, a much-discussed Saban discount emerged in Alabama. The Crimson Tide isn't thought to stand above the rest of college football in terms of outside donor spending on its players, but Saban's appeal ensured that the Tide always had the best roster anyway, or very close to it in the came close.

Seven games into new coach Kalen DeBoers' tenure, Alabama has lost something else: its poise. The Tide lost at Tennessee last Saturday, falling to a humiliating 52 through the first seven games, a level of infamy unknown in the program since 2007, during Saban's first year. A game this weekend against Missouri threatens a catastrophic third loss before the end of October. The unthinkable has become thinkable as the Tide recognizes the significant 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 national view of Alabama deteriorated sharply after Vanderbilt's failure. For a while, Alabama is not the Alabama you know.

What went wrong? Not the list itself. The Tide lost a few high-end players in the immediate aftermath of Saban's retirement, but it avoided a mass exodus. Recruitment reviews say that DeBoer's first team, full of mostly Saban players, is the most talented in college football. No one of any reputation expected Bama to stay Saban good forever, because that would mean winning about one in three national championships forever. But the fall wasn't meant to happen so quickly, with a best-in-class roster and a serious coach following Saban. DeBoer has done nothing but win in his previous coaching stops, recently taking Washington to the national title game in his second year in that job.

Because the problem isn't talent, Alabama has failed in other ways. Instead, in the two losses so far, the team has victimized itself by doing a lot of what football coaches would call stupid things. The Tides' first seven games without Saban, but with a Saban-like roster, have highlighted what a difference-maker Saban was in ways that went beyond making sure Bama always had the best players.

The loss to Tennessee was a series of mistakes by Alabama. Quarterback Jalen Milroe threw one of the most horrific interceptions of the season in the first half, throwing the ball directly to a defensive back in the end zone on second-and-goal from the 3-yard line. The throw was an amateur mistake of the kind Milroe could have made early in the 2023 season, when he was struggling before emerging as one of the nation's most effective quarterbacks. (He's thrown two interceptions in his last eight games after throwing four in his 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.

Other mental mistakes abounded last weekend. The Tides' penalties included two false starts, a delay of game, an intentional grounding, an illegal substitution and a crushing late personal foul called on defensive back Kendrick Law after a play was over. That decision was not a good one, as a Tennessee player initiated a mini-confrontation with Law and got away with it. But the officials tend to catch the second man in a fight, not the first, and the 15 yards against Alabama became a fourth-and-7, with the game down to a fourth-and-22. On that play, the running back appeared Justice Haynes to miss a blocking order, making a nearly impossible conversion even less possible.

The mood around Alabama is so somber that fans and media are even finding mental errors where they aren't there. A a whole news cycle followed early this week about some wide receivers, who were not involved in a play, miming a basketball shot while standing to the side. Later, Alabama's offensive coordinator indicated that they were told to do that, perhaps as a way to distract the defense on a play where they had no other job. It's shocking to see a fan base so accustomed to success forced to confront the kind of foolishness that normally eludes Bama.

Things will probably work out for Alabama fans in the end. But the defense might not. It ranks 19th^e in the country according to SP+, an opponent-adjusted efficiency metric, the worst ranking in more than a decade. (That's still pretty good, but this is Alabama.) The loss to Vanderbilt 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 took place when the Tide were struggling. Senior safety Malachi Moore, a program leader, later apologized for a scene in which he kicked a ball in frustration and apparently refused to be substituted.

It's not like Alabama never lost its center of gravity when Saban was in charge. The Tide had several episodes in its rare losses under him, including a handful in the Iron Bowl game with only Auburn. My personal favorite was the Auburn time used a little substitution trick to convince Alabama to take an illegal substitution penalty if they lost. A close second was when Alabama lost the ability to do so play a play-off or complete a snap from center to quarterback as Auburn roared to victory. The reality of us being more talented than everyone else (except sometimes Georgia or Ohio State) is that every loss meant Bama was, by definition, without his best stuff. But it didn't happen that often under Saban, who never had such poor performances in two out of three weeks. And actually, Alabama played just as poorly in a win over South Carolina between the two losses to Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

Over the long haul, Alabama will be fine. The rule of the Sabans caused the tide to change lasting financial benefit on almost everyone else, even on the other football schools with blue blood. Financial gains can be squandered, but Alabama plays in a small pool. Saban's lasting gift to the program is that Bama will never be more than a good coaching hire or a few good recruiting classes away from winning it all. At this point, Alabama could still get hot and sneak into the playoff at 102.

However, the same also applies to Ole Miss. For now, Alabama is a normal, flawed team with a lot of talent. There are no perfectly assembled machines in college football, a sport that, by its very nature, gets pretty messy. There are only powerful structures with different types of loose bolts. In addition to everything else Saban represented for Alabama, it has become clear how much of his genius lay in quality control. Without him, Alabama is more talented than everyone else, but it turns out to be just as easy break.