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
He's played a great role for this team all year. He's been unselfish, he's been a really good team guy and he's been very helpful with a lot of other players in terms of what he's done. I can't tell you how much we appreciate it as an organization based on what he's done and how he's played and how he's overcome a lot. We're real proud of him.
Jason has had a great camp and has done a great job in every regard. He's probably one of the guys who has had a lot more to learn because he's never really played that position as a professional player. He's playing a combination of two positions right now, but he's done a tremendous job of adapting and making plays.
I would say that if Jason Taylor had played in a 3-4 system somewhere, he would have been a Hall of Fame outside linebacker. There is no question about that based on the athletic ability the guy has. He's smart and he's got great instincts to learn things better than I ever hoped for. It gives us an opportunity to move him around and use him in a lot of different ways.
He's still hard to block. He does a great job of using his hands. He still plays with a lot of power. He still can rush and block people back to the quarterback. He's very instinctive on the field -- batting balls down and making a lot of plays. I think the guy is an astounding player and I think he's had a really good year doing what they expect him to do.
Lamar did a good job for us here. He worked hard. When you look at some of these circumstances, everybody has to have a role on the team. Some of the guys at that position are very good special teams contributors, and that certainly played a role in the backs that we've selected.
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,
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.
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.
I think every guy's different when it comes to that. Some guys are very instinctive and very understanding and therefore don't need to see it on the field as much.
You put your hand in the dirt, you got a guy sitting right there, you have to block him. You don't block him, what does it make any difference whether you are playing right guard, right tackle, left guard or left tackle? You have to move the guy. I think we are overrating anything that we have done, because we are totally missing the point.
You would hope that a guy would want to do something for positive reasons, because he wants to be successful and he buys into the things that can make him successful at what he does.
If we're going to do that, we should have had a press conference for the other three guys we signed, too. So how do we choose who has a press conference and who doesn't?
Football is football. When guys don't do things that are intentional to hurt somebody, which neither one of those things were, I think it's a little ridiculous. And it happens every week. It's not fair to the players.
I saw one of our guys get his helmet ripped off and the (referee) was standing right there looking at it, ... I said to him, 'What did (McMichael) do that was worse than a guy ripping Sammy Morris' helmet off right in front of him?' I'm not saying he shouldn't have gotten a penalty. I'm just saying: Is there such thing as consistency?