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
We certainly created some adversity for ourselves to overcome out there, ... but I was really pleased with how we responded time in and time out. Nobody's ever happy with penalties. Nobody's ever happy with turnovers. But I think it's most important to establish how you respond to that stuff when it happens in the game.
Rather than wear him out, we played him about as much as we planned. We'll play him more and more as time goes on and he gets in better and better shape.
We have total faith, trust and confidence in the guy. The guy has a tremendous amount of ability. He's going to be a long snapper for a long time in this league so the question is do we want to take the time to develop that or do we want to let him go snap for somebody else?
We need a little time to figure that out. We're going to take it from where it is and build for 12 games.
You know this is a time when nobody really ever really kind of tells the truth about what they plan to do. I certainly would never deceive you in anything that I told you, so rather than deceive you I would just rather not tell you certain things.
When you go down and score the first time you have the ball, that sets the tempo for the game.
Well, he just didn't look comfortable all the time in terms of making decisions ... and that's something that you'd always like to do with your players is make sure you're asking them to do things they're comfortable doing. You play to their strengths.
The Raiders had a hard time with him. He wrecked the game, creating two turnovers that really iced the game. He's a fantastic player.
For his first time he did a pretty good job.
It's difficult to know what 15 players are going to get picked before we pick. This is a time when nobody really ever really tells the truth about what they plan to do. We have to be ready and have every player evaluated.
Not that we're putting a timetable on doing this, but obviously, the sooner we can get done, the better. We don't control the timetable. Some of these things are time and circumstance, and you've just got to work through it.
It's an expectation: What are the most important things to accomplish at this time? To find out as much as we can about what those combinations are may be more important at this time than the end result so we can build on a better end result in the long term.
I think there's a pretty good formula for guys who at some point in time were college coaches and then they go to the NFL and, in whatever capacity they serve, they develop even further. When they go back to college, they're even more prepared, and they succeed there.
He has continued to do a good job every time he's been out there, ... and I think that's something that's got to be taken into consideration.