Alabama Football Held Players Only Meeting on Sunday

The Alabama Crimson Tide has had a challenging two week stretch after losing to Texas at home and putting on a sleepy performance against USF on the road.

The schedule shifts to SEC play this weekend and still numerous questions linger over the 2023 Alabama football team. Who's going to play quarterback? Can the offensive line play winning football? Is the defense improving? 

Crimson Tide offensive lineman Tyler Booker joined the Next Round Live for his normal Monday visit and revealed the players got together on Sunday and hashed things out.

"Ya, we had a players only meeting yesterday and we pretty much had that [a "come to Jesus moment" as phrased by Lance Taylor] everybody got a lot of stuff off their chest and I feel like we're all on the same page now," said Booker to Next Round Live. "It's unfortunate that it took a loss at Bryant-Denny and a subpar game in Tampa for that to happen, but I feel like we're all on the same page now. I'm actually excited to see how the rest of the season goes since we're all on the same page."

Suggestions were rampant that the Tide wasn't playing as a unit on Saturday and speculation swirled that it may have had to do with the decision to bench Jalen Milroe in favor of Tyler Buchner and Ty Simpson. Booker told the show that wasn't the case and described the nature of the conversation in the meeting room. 

"I wouldn't say there were any fractions. I just feel like we just put emphasis on togetherness. I'm not saying that we weren't together we're just emphasizing it more now. That was pretty much the emphasis of the whole meeting, just coming together and supporting each other. Not saying that we weren't doing that before, but we're just putting it on the forefront of everything. Because if we all do our job as a unit, as an offensive line if we do our job, if the running backs do their job, if the defensive backs do their job, if the wide receivers do their job then there's really nobody that can stop us. We just all have to execute at the same time what we're supposed to."

Are the USF Bulls a better football team than the experts predicted or was the Alabama offensive execution just that poor on Saturday after only tallying 17-points?

"I'd say it's a bit a both, it's like,'ya that's how bad we were'. But at the same time we were, on a lot of the plays that were TFLs or were sacks we were one second away from having a bomb or one block away from breaking off a big run," said Booker. "We don't live in a world of ifs. We live in a world of what happened and what will happen. You've just got to execute."

See Also: 

Alabama Coaches Announce Players of Week from USF Win