The topic of Nick Saban and his former assistant coaches was prevalent Wednesday at SEC Media Days.

Early on, he was asked in the main room if it was difficult to work for him.

About an hour later, he was on the SEC Network with Paul Finebaum where things got a little more revealing.

“When the season started, I think we were great,” Saban said. “When we won the LSU game, it just seemed like people’s own agendas starting to become more important.”

Finebaum asked Saban to clarify who he was identifying.

“Coaching,” he said. “We had a lot of guys who wanted to be head coaches at different places. It takes a special person to stay focused on what they have to do now when they have job somewhere else that’s awaiting them and they have a responsibility on staffs.”

For various reasons, seven assistant coaches left the Crimson Tide staff after the 2018 season.

Offensive coordinator Mike Locksley was the only assistant who took a head coaching job at Maryland. Positional coaches Dan Enos and Josh Gattis took offensive coordinator jobs at Miami and Michigan, respectively immediately after the championship game loss to Clemson.

Defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi went to the Cleveland Browns and running backs coach Joe Pannunzio landed on the Philadelphia Eagles staff. And offensive line coach Brent Key took almost the same job at his alma mater, Georgia Tech.

“I’m not being critical of those people,” Saban continued Wednesday morning on the SEC Network. “It’s just very challenging. And we had a lot of that on our staff last year, and I think those relationships with players go a long way to keeping players where they need to be to do the things they need to do – continue to prepare, practice the way they need to practice so that they can continue to improve and get better, and we just didn’t do that very well at the end of last year.”

Back in March during spring practices, Saban explained some of the differences between the 2018 coaching staff and the new group.

“I think that -- no disrespect to the coaches that we had here before,” Saban said March 26. “I thought they did a wonderful job. I think there were a couple of areas where we had a limited amount of experience, and I think that we’ve been able to improve the staff in a lot of ways with the people that we have and the experience that they have.

“I thought we needed to improve our staff as a recruiting staff a year ago. I think we did that. I think this recruiting class probably showed that. I think that the guys that we hired are good recruiters, but I do think in some cases we have more experience and I think knowledge and experience is always something that is really beneficial to teach players.”

The new staff includes several veterans who have worked previously with Saban. That includes offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian and linebackers coach Sal Sunseri. There are two former head coaches in Sarkisian and offensive line coach Kyle Flood, once the head guy at Rutgers.

AL.com’s Josh Bean contributed to this report.

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.