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 care if you are a coach or player, you have family and personal issues and those things that are of concern. Everybody's safety is of concern. I have a great appreciation for the players and what they were able to do today to stay focused on the things that we wanted to try to get accomplished.
This game is really about our players and not about me going back to Baton Rouge,
It's most important that we use caution right now, in terms of trying to keep some of our better players and more experienced players that have impact and leadership ready for the season,
He's an outstanding player who could line up and complement the things we do with our outside linebacker rush.
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.
He is respected throughout the league and has a strong background in player personnel,
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.
Ideally, we would like to keep many of those players on our roster, but we are simply not able to do that.
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.
(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.
Sure, I think that would put two good players together. We thought a lot about how we would implement that on offense and the fact that one of those players won't be here for some of the games in the beginning of the season would make it a little harder to develop at this point.
My biggest concern is how many players do we have that can go in and play (winning) football,
My biggest concern was how the members of our team would respond and react to Ricky coming back. And I think everybody had the idea that if he was committed to coming back and wanted to be a player that would contribute to the success of the team, that they would be all for it.
I think everybody needs to understand that we're not really changing our offense and we're not changing our defense. We're going to keep things as consistent for our players as we can.