Alabama’s success led to an unavoidable letdown for the Crimson Tide in 2013, according to former quarterback AJ McCarron. In a radio interview Thursday McCarron suggested Alabama’s championship success the past few years led to younger players thinking they could take the field and win whenever they wanted.
“We had a lot of young guys,” McCarron told The Jim Rome Show on Thursday at the Super Bowl’s radio row. “In the end, success was our killer. Too much success and a lot of young guys coming in who didn’t know what it took to get back to that point to win. They thought we’d just show up and we’d win.”
After winning two straight BCS championships, Alabama head coach Nick Saban expressed concern over his team getting too comfortable with the championship expectations in 2014. The Crimson Tide were the preseason number one and held on to the top spot in the polls for 11 games before losing to Auburn on a walk-off missed field goal returned for a touchdown. Alabama went on to lose to Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl, with five turnovers directly leading to 35 points for Oklahoma. The two-game losing streak for Alabama came out of nowhere, but it was not something McCarron was totally stunned by.
“Myself and CJ Mosley, we were basically the two leaders of the team and we felt like it was a matter of time before it was coming,” McCarron told Rome. “It’s definitely tough to lose, but it kind of shows when you don’t have everyone buy into one system, one belief, then sometimes a team is going struggle.”
Is McCarron throwing his team under the bus? McCarron accepted the blame for Alabama’s Sugar Bowl loss in the postgame press conference at the time, but his more recent comments may shed some more truth than anything McCarron has said before. McCarron also took swipes at various recruiting services, who McCarron labeled as guys who never played football.
“You have guys who have never played the game of football rating these guys that they are a 5-star, because they’re sitting behind a computer screen watching their highlight film. Well, their highlight film is supposed to be good, the last time I checked. That’s the kind of thing that ticks me off about recruiting and when these kids come in, and they’re 5-stars and they expect to play right off the bat. It’s a little entitlement and when they don’t play off the bat, they get a little ticked off and they don’t want to work.”
For what it is worth, McCarron was rated four stars by Rivals back in 2008.