TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — There are some subjects that Nick Saban will almost always talk about.

Saturday afternoon, after Alabama completed its second scrimmage of the spring, the coach was asked if he could see a noticeable difference on the field after the Crimson Tide had so many early departures for the National Football League this year.

His answer, which was yes, went nearly four minutes:

“I think there’s no question it’s different. But I don’t think it’s any different here than it is every place else. We’ve had this conversation, I think, before, but I don’t know. I don’t really look it. I’ve heard 135 guys, I’ve heard 142 guys went out early for the draft. I do know there’s some pretty compelling stats out there about guys going out early for the draft. I think in the last five years, not counting this year, there’s been 380 or thereabouts go out early for the draft, and 25 percent of those guys didn’t even get drafted. And another 25 percent weren’t on the team in three years. So, that means 50 percent of the guys that went out early for the draft had failed grades. But if you look at the number of guys that were first- and second-round draft picks, there were very few guys that had failed careers. Now, we have guys that have no draft grades, seventh-round grades, free-agent grades, fifth-round grades that are going out of the draft. And the person that loses in that is the player. If you’re a third-round draft pick, and we had one here last year — I’m not going to say any names — goes and starts for his team, so he’s making third-round money, which is not that great. He’d be the first guy taken at his position this year, probably, and make $15-18 million more. So, the agent makes out, the club makes out, and now they’ve got a guy that’s going to play for that kind of money for three more years, aight. And everybody out there’s saying, ‘Well, get to your next contract.’ Well, there’s obviously 50 percent of these guys that never get to a next contract. And that doesn’t mean all the rest of them got to one, either.

“So, it’s the culture and it’s the trend, and I’ve actually changed how I talk to recruits now. I tell every recruit that I talk to the reason that you’re going to college is to prepare yourself for the day you can’t play football. I think we have a lot of people way back in high school, aight, that look at college as a conduit to get to the NFL. And look, I am 100-percent NFL. I’m 100-percent guys have careers, aight. But people have to be smart about the business decisions they make relative to the NFL because it is all business. When people make emotional decisions, they’re going to have to suffer some really difficult consequences for themselves in the future because you don’t have to go out for the draft early. You can come back and play. We’ve had six or seven guys here that had second- or third-round grades that became top-15 and first-round draft picks and made a significant amount of money doing that, so there’s some really good examples of guys that did it that way. And look, I’m all for every one of our guys that went out for the draft. I’m going to do everything I can do to try to get them drafted as high as they can get drafted, aight, because once they say they’re leaving, what benefits our program is that they do great, and I want them all to do great.

“But I don’t think that — not just our players. There’s a significant amount of players that are not making good business decisions about what they do. And yeah, it affects our team, but our team turns over more quickly. We just have to have more better young guys that can go out there and learn how to play and provide depth for the team. And it’s not going to be an excuse for what kind of quality we put on the field. We’ve just got to do a better job of coaching because you’ve got to do a better job of developing young players because they’re going to have to play more quickly.”