Greg McElroy shares hilarious interaction with Nick Saban during playing days

ESPN college football analyst Greg McElroy spent his college football career under the guidance of one of the greatest head coaches in Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban. During a recent interview with his former head coach, McElroy shared with everyone this hilarious interaction he had with Saban during his playing days.

“You always told me, coach, you said, ‘Greg, I don’t need you to teach me how to throw interceptions. I’m a defensive back coach.’ I throw the best, most interceptable pass that you can make,” said McElroy. “That’s basically what you do in position drills: just throw picks over and over again.”

If McElroy had a tendency to throw interceptions at Alabama, he hardly showed it during game action. The former seventh-round pick of the New York Jets was the starting quarterback for the Crimson Tide in 2009 and 10. Over those last two seasons, McElroy threw a total of 37 touchdowns to just nine interceptions.

During his time at Alabama, McElroy was more of a game manager than a game-changer, like you see with their current quarterback, Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young. But that is understandable given how SEC teams played during the first two decades of the 2000s. Most teams were built with a power running system which is precisely what Alabama had with running backs Mark Ingram, Trent Richardson, and Eddie Lacy. All of which were first-round selections and second-round picks in their respective drafts.

McElroy recalls Nick Saban’s first days at Alabama, rebuild of football program

Greg McElroy took a time machine back to the first days of Nick Saban at Alabama, and how much change took place in a short period of time.

During an appearance on 3 and Out with John Middlekauff, McElroy harkened back to the days of Mike Shula leading the Crimson Tide, and the adjustment it took to get used to Saban’s demanding coaching style.

“It was like polar opposites, you over-correct, right? So, Mike Shula was like the ultimate, NFL, positive, everything’s great, let’s not work too hard, like, players coach. Like, we’re going to take care of everybody, we need everyone to feel good when they go into the game on Saturday. Coach Saban was basically like, if you survive this you’re going to be great, but you might not survive this,” began McElroy. “That’s how hard this off-season program is going to be. I mean, so we do the fourth quarter program.

“The fourth quarter program is notoriously one of the most difficult off-season programs anywhere. Everyone’s doing some variation of it now, I mean it’s all pretty similar. It’s basically mat drills, but it’s basically that on steroids. Where you’re having to run like two 100-yard dashes and it’s ludicrous. It really is. A difficult stretch of fourth-quarter workouts is like three weeks. It’s like, that is nose to the grindstone, if you can make it through three weeks like, alright you’re good. Let’s go into spring ball, we’re in great shape. First spring was six weeks of fourth-quarter workouts. Six weeks. And it was to the point like, guys were quitting everyday. Like, this is the worst, worst grind I’ve ever been through. We started February 1, we finished the middle of March. To this day, that was by far the hardest six-week period of my life in a football uniform. Absolutely miserable.