Tuscaloosa, Alabama - After having his perfect 15-year streak snapped in the Week 7 loss to Tennessee, legendary Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban has been losing sleep over the mental state of his players.

"I think from a psychological standpoint, I really want the players to be more positive, more aggressive, think about positive things, not have a lot of anxiety about what could go wrong, what could happen so that they can have really fun playing, fun competing," Saban said Thursday on his radio show, The Nick Saban Show.

"Play to win, don’t worry about trying to play to keep from getting beat. Sometimes, I think we have a little bit too much of that, and we’re trying to get it fixed," he added.

In preparation for Week 8's conference play against Mississippi State on Saturday, the seasoned Crimson Tide coach has been preaching positivity to his football team as it looks to rebound from the season's biggest upset yet.

"Trying to get the players to bounce back. It was kind of a collective disappointment for all of us, the way we played last week," Saban said.

When Tennessee's kicker Chase McGrath successfully made his 40-yard field goal for the win, it unleashed a flood of social media criticism and even mockery.

Alabama's Will Anderson Jr. revealed that he and teammates played with great anxiety in Knoxville, but Volunteers lineman Gerald Mincey trolled him with post shared on his Instagram Story: "Naw fam you just suck..."

With the mentality of the Crimson Tide being been a hot topic this week on social media, Saban has been trying to fight back by building his players' confidence back up, and shielding them from external pressure.

"High achievement motivation and low anxiety is the best way to have the best performance," the coach insisted. "And we just seem to have a lot of that, and it’s kept me up a lot at night this week trying to figure that out. I’ve even talked to the leadership group on the team, I’ve talked to some players on the team. They wanted to so bad, maybe it was too bad."

Alabama will host to Mississippi State on Saturday for a 7 PM EDT kickoff.