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 think we are going to do a lot of stuff. We haven't done much the whole preseason. . . but what we want to do is, go through a preparation so the players get an idea of what we are doing and the kind of adjustments they have to make and things like that. It's more the idea of going through the process than it is to do different things.
I think those are the kinds of decisions we would certainly like to have some input into. Our goal and focus is, number one, to respect the player. Ricky did an outstanding job for us on the field. Secondly, (we want to) respect the decision of the league, relative to what they felt it was necessary to do.
It enhances our chances to prepare our team well.
I don't think he is ready to carry it 45 times, but hopefully we can get him in that 12 to 15 touch-mode. We're going to have to keep playing him into it. He's going to have to keep increasing his work load as we go.
Managing the game is the most important thing. Gus has done a pretty good job of that. Turnovers are not killing us. We won the turnover battle in the games that we won and we didn't in the one that we lost.
I think if he showed he was committed to coming back and wanting to be a productive player, that's the only issue with me. From a team standpoint, I've discussed this with some of the key leaders on the team ... and it would be counterproductive to me to turn my back on all that.
I think that's something we've always looked at as a two-starter position.
A lot of people wearing Saints shirts were very nice to me.
If we can get all of the guys to play as well as they are capable of playing, we could have a good football team,
(That) can only be brought about by a lot of conversation and getting to know someone. I don't know this particular player well enough to make that determination right now, but it's something we might be interested in in the future.
He put half of our defensive team in the training room for a week every time we played him. The thing that separates (Brown) from the other running backs available in this draft was his versatility and the number of things that he could do as a football player. I'm surprised that other people ... have not made a more significant emphasis about the versatility this guy has.
It's something that we need to continue to evaluate. It has seemed the entire pre-season, whichever quarterback played second has played best.
I think he has the arm talent to do it. He can do it.
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.