Nick Saban heard it.
His players certainly did too — Will Anderson especially. In a polite setting, Saban calls these Alabama fans “naysayers” and you can hear the passion when he spoke about them Saturday night. Alabama had just beat Auburn, 49-27 in the Iron Bowl for its third straight win since its second loss of the season.
The coach who rails on avoiding outside noise took a different tone when addressing the discontent from within the Crimson Tide fan base. He’s seen it fuel this team in the weeks since the Nov. 5 overtime losses at LSU.
“We’re all we’ve got and we’re all we need.”
That’s the refrain Alabama players have echoed since that rock bottom moment in Baton Rouge when the second loss in three games appeared to torpedo any playoff conversation. But now, though still an outside possibility, a little more chaos paired with Alabama wins over Ole Miss, Austin Peay and Auburn have the Tide back in the conversation.
Saban and several Crimson Tide players said that negativity from just outside the program walls lit a fire.
“Definitely,” Alabama offensive lineman Emil Ekiyor said. “It’s kinda hard to ignore playing at a university like this. But, as a team, I think it brought us closer together. Just leaned on each other.”
It was Anderson, the All-American linebacker who Ekiyor said brought the “We’re all we’ve got and we’re all we need” tagline to the Alabama locker room. Bryce Young echoed it and they’ve been repeating it over and over during practice and game warmups.
What followed wasn’t always pretty but Alabama escaped Ole Miss a 30-24 winner before beating FCS Austin Peay last week and dumping the highest offensive yardage total on Auburn (516) since the Oct. 15 loss at Tennessee.
Ekiyor said that motivational kick in the pants came when it couldn’t be bleaker.
“Everybody was so down after the (LSU) loss and it helped give us something to rally upon and lean on each other,” he said. “I think we got a lot closer through those experiences and maybe helped us in the last couple of games.”
Defensive lineman DJ Dale said he’s normally not one to listen to the outsiders
“But obviously some stuff you can’t really avoid,” he said. “… Nobody sees what we do on a day to day basis so their opinion doesn’t matter. That’s how I view it.”
And while Saban noted the fire these “naysayers” lit in the locker room in the moment, he’s no fan of this discussion in a broad sense. He first of all thanked the fans who braved wet weather Saturday and whose noise contributed to six Auburn false start flags, he had something else for the seedy underbelly of the culture.
“People who are negative and naysayers, if they support the University of Alabama, you are hurting the university and hurting the program because it’s a reflection on our culture and how positive we are,” Saban said. “And this program was built on positive. It was built on 95,000 people coming to the spring game the first spring we were here and everyone wanted to be a part of that.
“It wasn’t built on naysayers. It wasn’t built on negative. It wasn’t built on expectations that, if we don’t succeed at a certain level, that there’s going to be a lot of criticism. And I think that brought this team together more than anything else.”
Culture has been a talking point of Saban’s and a number of former Crimson Tide players who’ve been critical of what they’ve seen this season. Questions about the mindset came not just from barstools and the cheap seats but from alumni who once wore that uniform.
While Saban has said the culture had been something they’ve emphasized in recent weeks. He said on a recent radio show that it “hurts my heart” to see this criticism from alums but “we’re working on it.”
On Saturday, he gave a full-throated endorsement of the locker room.
“The culture of the program is just as good as it’s always been and the players compete just as well as they always have,” he said, “So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the culture here. We lost two games by four points. Nobody feels worse about that than me and the players who made a tremendous commitment to try to win those games in tough places on the road and there’s nothing else I can say about it.”
Now, Alabama must wait.
It’ll need some help to backdoor its way into the College Football Playoff but, at the very least, there’s pride within the program with how the final three weeks of this regular season transpired.
And, for that, they offered something short of a thank you to the haters. They helped close ranks in the Alabama football program that did its part since the buses left Tiger Stadium that first Saturday of November.
Michael Casagrande is a reporter for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or ten Facebook.