The Loop
Nick Saban recalling a play he ran when he was 15 years old is peak football nerdery
We hardly needed anymore proof that Nick Saban was a football god. The six National Championships, eight SEC titles and 232 victories speak for themselves. But Saban recalling an exact play he ran when he was 15 years old only adds to his legend.
In an E:60 segment shot back in July titled "Tell Me A Story," Saban, who turned 67 this past Halloween, went all the way back to his high school days at Monongah H.S. in West Virginia. There, Saban was the starting quarterback as a sophomore, and he called all the plays, a frightening thought for a teenager. But this is a football savant we are talking about, and Saban remembers a key moment late in a huge game where he learned his first coaching lesson. It's a must-watch video for any football fan, any Saban fan or hater and I'd say any Crimson Tide fan but there's a strong chance many of them have already watched it 400 times and have begun to build a second statue on the other side of Bryant-Denny Stadium:
You hear this in every late situation of every big game in both the NFL and college football: go to your best player. Give him a chance to win the game. Even if it doesn't work, at least you lost with the ball in the hands of your best guy. Yet still, you see countless head coaches fail to understand this simple concept across college football. Think James Franklin in a game earlier this season against Ohio State. Game on the line, 4th down, and quarterback Trace McSorley had almost 500 yards of total offense and Franklin called a run play to his halfback instead of letting McSorley decide the game. Meanwhile, Saban has lived by this philosophy since he was 15. That's why Saban's Saban and everyone else is everyone else.