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 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.
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.
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,
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.
It doesn't mean that just because we work somebody out that we have an issue. That is not something that anybody should assume. There are things called information gathering and we are allowed to use workouts of players who are not under contract to gather information about those players.
I think that's a great example -- and those players know it who were involved -- that to play a game for 60 minutes, you've got to be disciplined and you never want to have undisciplined, unprovoked penalties like that. My advice is act like you've been there.
Sometimes, players have never had things explained that way to them, and maybe that's why they see it a little bit different,
It really goes back to the way I've always tried to teach, ... A lot of people teach players what to do. Some people teach players how to do it. But not everyone always teaches someone why it's important to do it that way.
If you don't have an indoor facility, you've got to cut down the practice time in preparation for the game so the players can recover. Or you change the environment they do the work in, which an indoor facility allows you to do. It's really a player health and safety issue as much as anything.