Another Saturday night, another lively postgame Nick Saban news conference.
Again, the topic was the influence of outside voices influencing his Alabama football team. This time it followed the Crimson Tide's uneven 27-19 win over Texas A&M on a strange night in College Station.
A question about first-quarter three-and-outs triggered Saban's response.
"We just didn't play as well tonight and you have to give them a lot of credit for it," Saban began.
Then a pause.
"I'm trying to get our players to listen to me instead of listening to you guys," Saban said. "All that stuff you write about how good we are. All that stuff they hear on ESPN. It's like poison.
"It's like taking poison.
"Like rat poison."
Saban wasn't happy with the way Alabama finished the game after building a 24-3 lead early in the third quarter. A few big plays from Texas A&M, a shanked punt, a blocked punt for a safety and the first turnover in 36 quarters will do that.
It followed a week of positivity that came with beating Vanderbilt and Ole Miss by a combined 125-3. Alabama again topped all the polls.
With it, positive headlines from the sporting press.
And that, as Saban's been known to say, creates clutter.
"I'm asking them are you going to listen to me or are you going to listen to these guys about how good you are? Just like your question right now, we get stopped three out of four times like that's a bad thing?
"We're not going to beat everybody 66-3."
Safety Minkah Fitzpatrick said the team pays no attention to media attention or hype.
"I think this opponent just challenged us a little bit more than we expected, I guess you can say. They're a great team and I respect them a whole lot."
Senior linebacker Rashaan Evans said he was "very disappointed" in the way things went in the A&M game.
"It's definitely important for any team not to get complacent," he said. "The fact that we gave up 19 points is not good at all because we'll be playing better teams. Anytime you give up 19 points, it can easily be pretty bad."
Some perspective was gained from this one, though.
"I wouldn't call it a reality check," said running back Damien Harris. "I would just say we needed this test. I'd call it a test more than a reality check because not every game is going to be like that. The farther we go into our schedule, we know the harder it's going to get. There's going to be more games like this."
Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande.