Alabama will begin its 12th spring under coach Nick Saban on Tuesday afternoon.
It will be the fifth March with Saban in which the Crimson Tide will open workouts as college football’s reigning national champions. That alone will make this different from last year, when Saban was using “Don’t waste a failure” as a motto after Alabama’s 35-31 loss to Clemson in the title game for the 2016 season.
“You have to have a completely different mindset when you’re trying to prove something as opposed to proving it and responding from that,” Saban told the SEC Network earlier this month. “It’s a totally different mindset when you have success, and I think the big thing is that the players have to remember what helped them be successful. What this team is going to accomplish will be determined by what they do in the future and not by what they’ve done in the past.
“So far, we’ve had a pretty good offseason.”
The Crimson Tide return plenty of talent but had a nation-leading 14 former players invited to last month’s NFL combine, and there is no bigger spring topic in the sport than the quarterback situation in Tuscaloosa.