Alabama won’t be participating in this year’s College Football Playoff, which has been a huge source of disappointment to the Crimson Tide’s players and coaches, as well as their fan base.

Nick Saban’s team put together a 10-2 record, losing one the final play of the game at both Tennessee and LSU.

All said, the Crimson Tide were 2 plays and just a few points from being undefeated and playing Georgia in the SEC Championship game.

It didn’t work out that way, however.

But one of Alabama’s best players, Will Anderson Jr., said in a recent interview that playing against the type of schedule that his team plays comes with the territory.

“We played a lot of good games, like Texas. We played at Tennessee; we played at LSU,” said the All-American linebacker. “But, you know,  that’s why you come to Alabama, to play in games like that. And even though it wasn’t the outcome that we wanted, the team still fought hard. … We just got to play smarter football. We get an opportunity to that in this bowl that we have coming up, so I’m super excited about that and I can’t wait for it.”

it was also a tough year for Anderson personally at times, as opposing defenses schemed against him in 2022, which led to a decrease in his numbers from a year ago.

“Yeah, I’m not going to lie, it was a little frustrating at first,” said Anderson of the attention he got from opposing offenses. “It kind of got to me a little bit. But talking to Coach Saban and a few other coaches at Alabama, they broke it down for me.

“… They had to break it down to ‘hey like, we want you to have all the success you want but you’re a game-changer (and) people are going to try to stop you. People are going to try to slow you down.’ I think they did the best job they could of helping me.”

You can check out the entire segment with Anderson and SEC analyst Chris Gordy in the tweet linked below: