How can you tell spring practice has started in Athens? When a player gets quoted saying this:
In retrospect, Herrera agrees that the veteran-laden defense, 10 of whom ended up getting invited to last month’s NFL combine, may have just assumed they would be good again.
“Pretty much. I think that’s what it was,” Herrera said. “Sometimes there was a lot of complacency, where people just got comfortable with what they were doing, and what they did (in 2011).”
I guess we should prepare ourselves for a young defense that finds itself during the season, plays its ass off in the second half of the season, gets all kinds of critical acclaim after the season… and then regresses in 2014. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Get The Picture 
Hope we aren’t saying this about the offense after a few games. With all the talent and experience coming back they are at risk of the same attitude, though I have more confidence in Murray not to let that happen. At least I hope.
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It seems to be only a defensive problem
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If experience laden units coming off of banner years are this prone to complacency, what are we doing to make sure it doesn’t happen to the offense in 2013?
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Giving Mason a chance to win the starting job at G-Day. 😉
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Well played, Senator
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Do you have the sneaking suspicion that our Bluto was just laying for that?
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Mason will make his own chances cause no one is gonna give him anything. Nor should they. Every analysts is looking for any kind of link between spring success and regular season success over the years, only to come up short. Always the fans and writers will give in to the temptation to find something to read into spring records. Bauta is 6-foot-3, 225 pounds and runs a 4.55 forty. He is much more interesting than Mason.
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Well, if you study the stats….
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Meh, those kinda quotes happen at every school, with maybe the exception of Bama. What else is there to talk about during the offseason?
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If for no other reason than his ability to keep his teams from falling prey to this, Saban is a great coach. I think his “Process” of kicking underachievers to the curb is one of the biggest reasons for his success.
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Competition is the prescription. The only time a player should be a lock on a position is when he’s reached an untouchable level … Murray has but who else on this team? Possibly Gurley.
The moment a coach senses complacancy in a player, he should drop one level on the depth chart until he gets his helmet on right.
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And honestly, Murray is untouchable because he KEEPS himself untouchable, as evidenced by the story of how he is going to spend his spring break in training. He is an excellent example to his teammates.
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Gurley isn’t untouchable. If you recall, Marshall started the bowl game. I never read whay that happened, but I assumed it was just a bit of an “attention getter”.
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They’ll be fine.
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Bob Knight’s book “The Power of Negative Thinking” deals with this issue.
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We just gotta get budder.
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Meh. A couple of years ago, this was a real problem. Now, I’m not so sure. If this was a pervasive problem (beyond a couple of guys), you can make the case for it until the team got called out for playing soft. If that happened a few years ago, no way does the team rally like they did this year. If there was a complacency issue, I don’t think it was among the core leadership of the team this year (Jarvis Jones comes to mind). I’m guessing Herrera hasn’t seen real complacency in the style of Willie.
Hey, if it motivates the players that are there, then I’m ok with him saying it.
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