Nick Saban
Nick Saban
Nicholas Lou Saban Jr. is an American football coach. He is the head football coach at the University of Alabama, a position he has held since the 2007 season. Saban previously served as head coach of the National Football League's Miami Dolphins and three other universities: Louisiana State University, Michigan State University, and the University of Toledo. His eight-year contract totaling US$32 million made him one of the highest paid football coaches, professional or collegiate, in the United States at the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth31 October 1951
CityFairmont, WV
CountryUnited States of America
I don't feel like we have enough depth. Lance has certainly made a lot of improvement. He is a veteran player that's starting to feel more comfortable in the system. He did make a couple of good plays in this game.
I don't know that tradition has ever won or lost a game. As far as I can tell, the field they have up there is 53 yards wide and 100 yards deep. They'll play 11. We'll play 11. The game will be decided on who does the best job of blocking and tackling and dominating the guys they play against.
Nobody wishes that anybody has to go through what one of our colleagues is having to go through right now relative to his loss in this holiday season.
Nobody has a crystal ball. Nobody can make a prediction. But based on history, the guy is making good progress to come back. ... And as you see his progress being made, it doesn't become a leap of faith to determine whether the guy can come back.
Ricky did a fantastic job for us this year. If someone said, 'Who have you enjoyed coaching the most in all my years of football,' he'd be one of the top guys I've ever been around.
Richard is an outstanding coach who has been in the NFL for 17 years. I coached with him in Houston and have always thought he was one of the best coaches I've had the chance to work with.
Philosophically, they want to establish the run, ... The most important aspect in the game was we stopped the run early.
Philosophically, I don't there's a lot of difference in terms of what we like to do. His knowledge of the league and being able to define things internally in the organization, so you have everybody on the same page, are probably his greatest assets. That and recognition of what people can do - the strength of players, coaches and people in the organization - and putting them in position where they can have success doing it.
Nobody in this room, with all of our power and might put together, can have anything to do with where it goes. What we can try to do is have something to do with preparing for the game and doing our job well and having pride in the performance of what we have to do.
One of the most difficult parts of my job is having to release players, and the past week has emphasized this fact. This is especially true when those players made significant contributions to the success of the team in the past. Ideally, we would like to keep many of those players on our roster, but we are simply not able to do that.
Last year was a mountain climb -- we were fortunate to be able to plant the flag at the top of the mountain and win the national championship, ... This year, we have won zero games. We are at base camp at the bottom of the mountain looking up at the climb. And it will be very difficult.
Olindo has had a fantastic camp. He has made a much higher percentage of his kicks than what our standard would be.
Maybe we can create some problems and issues for teams by doing that.
My last conversation was awhile back and was really about our heritage, trying to figure out where we came from and what we did,