Alabama football head coach Nick Saban doesn't believe underclassmen benefit from leaving school early for the NFL draft unless they are top-ranked players.

Saban, whose Crimson Tide team lost seven underclassmen to the 2019 NFL draft, provided reasoning for his take after Alabama's spring game on Saturday, per ESPN.com:

"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.

The third-round pick in reference is Jacksonville Jaguars safety Ronnie Harrison, who started eight games in his rookie season. He signed a four-year contract with base salaries totaling $2,585,000 and a guaranteed pro-rated bonus of $803,032, per Over the Cap.

There are two sides to Saban's initial comments.

On the pro-Saban side, yes, a player could improve his draft stock during his senior season and earn more guaranteed money if he's selected higher.

For example, Kentucky edge-rusher Josh Allen was considered a solid (but not high) first-round pick before this season. He was No. 19 in Luke Easterling of Draft Wire's preseason mock, of note.

Now it's looking like Allen could be a top-three pick, as pointed out by Matt Miller of Bleacher Report's latest scouting notebook.

On the anti-Saban side, there's no guarantee that player will be rated higher year to year. His performance can dip, or other better, younger prospects at his position can outshine him.

That player can also suffer a career-ending injury, thereby preventing him from profiting off his football career. Any money is better than no money.

Or a player can suffer an injury that hurts his draft stock, like when Notre Dame linebacker and surefire first-round pick Jaylon Smith suffered a torn ACL and MCL in the Fiesta Bowl and dropped to Round 2.

Saban continued to make his case, noting that agents and NFL teams make out better than players. He also brought up an argument that players should look to get to their next contract but said "there's obviously 50 percent of these guys never getting to a next contract. And that doesn't mean all the rest of them got to one, either."

He also spoke about players making "emotional decisions" and that "they're going to have to suffer some really difficult consequences for themselves in the future."

Saban further said the Tide "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."

He closed with this remark:

"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."

The problem for players is that emotional decisions are sometimes the ones that must be made, especially when collegiate athletes are not being compensated.

If a player's family is struggling financially, a prospect might feel compelled to enter the pros and earn money immediately as opposed to waiting an extra 12 months. And who can blame them?

Saban isn't necessarily wrong when he says players could be better off improving their draft stocks with another year of school (which in turn would get players one year closer to their degrees). However, some players don't have that choice.