Alabama’s defense is a lot of things.

It’s certainly the best in the country this season. And if you ask defensive end Jonathan Allen, it has the potential to be the best of all time.

Washington coach Chris Petersen described it as not just elite but as a “really, really elite championship defense” after it held the Huskies’ prolific offense to seven points and less than 200 total yards last Saturday to advance to the College Football Playoff National Championship Presented by AT&T against Clemson.

"Defensively, they're No. 1 in the world in everything," Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said.

But of the many superlatives applied to Alabama’s defense, one stands above the rest, and surprisingly enough it comes from the sound-bite-averse Nick Saban.

After Saban’s top-ranked Crimson Tide went into LSU and shut out the Tigers 10-0 in November, he labeled his defense a “hateful” bunch.

The moniker has stuck.

It’s not just that the defense leads the FBS in points and yards per game. It’s how it does it. Cruel, unrelenting and downright suffocating at times, the Tide have an edge that can only be described as mean.

That persona doesn’t come directly from Saban, though. The team's players make that happen, and one player in particular stands out.

Watch enough Alabama games and you can probably make an educated guess who that is.

Would senior linebacker Ryan Anderson qualify as the most hateful player on defense?

“You already know the answer to that,” said defensive back Minkah Fitzpatrick. “Definitely confirming that. He always has that look, that killer look in his eye. He actually said in one interview that he hates the other team.”

Scrolling through this season’s clips, it’s true.

When Anderson was asked about Saban’s description of the defense, he agreed wholeheartedly.

“We hate everybody on the other team,” he explained. “Everybody that lined up across from us, we hate you. We are going to try to kill you.”

If you’re thinking right now that Anderson is saying all of this to get a rise out of people, think again.

This is the linebacker who nearly came to blows with Jameis Winston when the two were in high school -- competing in a nothing 7-on-7 tournament.

This is the linebacker who was so upset by his classmates teasing him in grade school about Auburn’s winning streak that he actually “kicked a dude.”

Anderson can’t stand it when he catches teammates smiling during practice. The happy-go-lucky Fitzpatrick will get “that look” from Anderson, he said, and his grin will disappear.

Fitzpatrick called him the “tone-setter.”

“He has his days where he might not be in the best mood,” he said.

And when that happens?

“Definitely steer clear from him.”

Safety Ronnie Harrison, who plays with something of an edge himself, said that he once caught Anderson coming off the field during a game saying that he “wanted to kill somebody out there.”

“I was like, ‘Whoa, Ryan. We’re good, brother. We’re all right,’” he said.

“He’s serious and means everything he says.”

While Anderson may go a bit too far sometimes, Harrison said it’s good to have him around to keep everyone focused, to keep that “hate switch” turned on.

“I feel like if you’re a great player, the defense is going to feed off you,” Anderson said. “If you’re the best player on your defense and you’re out there and you’re knocking the hell out of people and helping them up, your team and your whole defense is going to be nice like that. You go to help a guy up, you might take it easy on him the next play. I feel like you can’t be like that when you play this game. It’s a war when you step on that field, and you have to expect that.”

He didn’t mind when things got chippy late in the game against Washington.

It was his pick-six that all but ended the game, after all.

“They had a long season,” Anderson said. “They had high hopes and they lost this game and they didn’t know how to react to it. They’d never been there before. So you can’t blame them. They didn’t train like us.”

Whether Clemson did remains to be seen.

The Tigers lost a shootout to the Tide in last season’s title game, and Alabama’s defense is hoping to keep Deshaun Waston & Co. from having as much success this time around.

Anderson’s play, as much as his personality, will go a long way in determining the outcome of the game.

On a defense stacked with stars like Jonathan Allen, Tim Williams and Reuben Foster, Anderson has been vastly underrated.

Over the 2015 and 2016 seasons, he’s amassed 14 sacks, 19 quarterback hurries, 28.5 tackles for loss and five forced fumbles, yet he’s no one's All-American and isn’t getting much hype as a first-round NFL draft pick. He wasn’t even a first- or second-team All-SEC pick by the league’s coaches this season.

Watching Anderson drive opponents to the turf, it’s as if he’s playing with something to prove.

And that might be exactly what the most universally acclaimed defense in college football needs: an edge.

Good isn’t good enough for him.

“I just bring it, man,” he said.