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 respect that, as long as it's taking into account the balance of how it's affecting the player.
We're going to look at this as a two-starter position.
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 need to make sure we have an adequate backup at that position. We're trying to work through that right now, either with the players we have on our team or some who are available in free agency.
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.
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.
The MRI didn't show anything seriously wrong with him. It is day-to-day and I don't know how long he will be out.
If Sam can't play, it may make us make some other changes,
That's what you look for in young players, is can they elevate their game, and can they improve and are they making progress.
It's not the kind of football I like to see from our team. We'll work hard to try to get it fixed. There is no excuse for it. We dropped balls, we didn't execute, we didn't play with the kind of urgency and intensity that good teams play with. Everybody needs to decide what kind of team we're going to have.
His team, as well as himself, had a few bumps in the road. They struggled, offensively, for whatever reasons. I just don't know the specifics of it.