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'm very confident in him, ... Him being able to manage this situation with the first team out there is going to be a good experience for him. If this circumstance ever pops up in the future, it will be something that will serve him well.
It was a close call. You don't want the game to come down to that situation if you're playing like you're supposed to for the 60 minutes in the game. Secondly, we need to be (holding) the ball so it's not close.
It was a difficult decision because I thought he was doing very well and making a lot of progress. I don't think it's a situation right now where we can wait for a guy for a significant amount of time.
What people do on the field is kind of your calling card in terms of the quality of work. When he was a defensive coordinator at Jacksonville and Pittsburgh, they did some pretty quality work. They had top-line defensive teams. He did it in different situations featuring different types of players. That will be helpful to us.
We go in and had the same situation because of our turnover (Brown had fumbled on the preceding possession), and make a sack and get a turnover. It doesn't get any bigger than that.
(Ronnie) wants to do well and he is working hard to do well and you can't always evaluate every situation based on results, in terms of how many yards he is getting a carry and things like that. Some of it is his responsibility, but I think it is a team thing that we all need to improve on, so everybody has a chance to be more successful, including Ronnie Brown.
Ronnie did a nice job in the game. I'm sure nobody feels worse about fumbling the ball in the situation at the end of the game than he does and that's something that we'll have to learn and grow from.
We want to support every player, and I think every player knows he has a responsibility for what to do and what not to do. As a coach, I also feel a responsibility to put a player in the best situation possible so he can have success.
We've tried to make a plan on how we would operate if we do have an agreement, how it would that impact our ability to make improvements to the team. All we can do is manage the situation the best we can.
Would we rather have been in a situation where we didn't have to call timeout by having the best block team that we could on the field? Absolutely, but that wasn't the case, ... I felt that it was an important enough situation in the game, because our guys do a pretty good job inside of getting penetration, to get the right guys in there to do the best job of trying to get the kick blocked.
Would we have rather have been in a situation where we didn't have to call timeout? Absolutely, ... But I felt it was an important enough situation in the game.
He did well, actually better than I thought he would. We did not want him to go the whole practice because we didn't want him to get in an overuse situation where he might fatigue that particular injury and have additional problems.
My only feeling is that the situation and the circumstance that created this whole thing is unfortunate for a lot of people. I think that it is unfortunate for the Saints that they have to go through a lot of changes to do what they have to do, but probably, more importantly, the fans and all of the people affected by this tragedy.
I think having poise and the ability to execute is critical to play in tough situations and we have to find a psychological balance that we can do that,