.video-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; padding-top: 30px; height: 0; overflow: hidden; } .video-container iframe, .video-container object, .video-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } As Ryan Kelly begins his final season at Alabama, though, he is thinking about meeting the expectations of being a Crimson Tide football player.

Following Bama’s first day of fall camp Friday, Kelly, a 6-5, 300-pound fifth-year senior from West Chester, Ohio, admitted that he occasionally looks at the ring he received for winning the SEC Championship last year “and it feels like we didn’t win anything.” The reason, of course, is that Alabama failed to finish for the second year in a row.

“From 2009 to 2012 we had three out of four national championships and the last two years we haven’t finished,” he said.

Kelly, who was redshirted during Bama’s 2011 national championship season and the back-up to Barrett Jones in the 2012 title season, will be starting for the third season this year.

He explained the expectations at Alabama. “You either live up to it, or you just crumble underneath it,” he said. “We’ve been able to play to a standard. We set the bar for ourselves; that being said, the bar was set before any of us even got here.

“From 2009 to 2012 we had three out of four national championships. The last two years we haven’t finished.”

Even though Alabama won the SEC Championship last year, with a 12-2 record and a loss in the first round of the College Football Playoff, Kelly said the feeling is that last year’s team didn’t win anything.

The national championship goal is stressed even before a player arrives in Tuscaloosa, he said. It begins when the player is being recruited. “Every guy on the roster is here because he wants to be a national champion,” Kelly said. “The ultimate goal never changes; win a national championship.”

As the center, Kelly has a special relationship with the quarterback. They are the two men who handle the football on every play and the two men responsible for getting the offense in the right formation and setting blocking schemes.

Last year Blake Sims came from underdog role to record-setting Bama quarterback and Most Valuable Player in the SEC Championship Game. “I guarantee there were more doubters than believers in what he was capable of doing,” Kelly said of Sims. “A guy like that is always going to be remembered.”

Kelly couldn’t say for sure when he realized that Sims would be the 2014 quarterback. Alabama Coach Nick Saban said Sims didn’t win the job against Jacob Coker until the final scrimmage before the start of the season.

“I remember Blake and Jake battling really hard throughout camp,” Kelly said. “I think you’re going to see that this year. There’re are a lot of guys in our quarterback pool who are just very qualified, great teammates, and guys that can definitely help us improve and win us a lot of football games.

“Right now, I don’t know (who will win the job). It’s kind of the same as last year. Just be patient.”

He said he sees quarterbacks gaining confidence the more practice repetitions they get. “That’s Coach Saban’s philosophy,” Kelly said. “I think all five of those guys (senior Jacob Coker, junior Alec Morris, sophomore Cooper Bateman, redshirt freshman David Cornwell, and true freshman Blake Barnett) have done that. I couldn’t say enough about those guys, because in a position where only one of them can play, it could very easily be a selfish move by one of them. You don’t see that with these guys. They’re just competitors. They’re all for the team, from top to bottom, from Jake the oldest to Blake the youngest. They’re very helpful to each other and willing to do anything for the team.”

Kelly thinks about his senior season and having a number of teammates “who haven’t even won a bowl game.” He said he sees the team getting back to made national championship teams.

“I can see the change in the coaching staff and in the players, too, the attitude we bring every day.

“This is a special place.”

Made all the more so by special players like Ryan Kelly.