Former Nick Saban assistants setting mind blowing record in coaching searches

The coaching carousel of the 2021 college football season has been one of the wildest and craziest in recent memory. Big time jobs such as LSU, USC, and Florida, have all opened up and two of those have already been filled, one with a former Nick Saban assistant.

An endless number of different coaches have been listed for jobs across the country and it can be tough to sift through the chaos and madness of it all. One commodity that will always be popular in football circles — former Nick Saban assistants.

This off-season has been no different as former Nick Saban assistant Billy Napier has landed the head coaching job at Florida. Check out the tweet below from Zach Barnett.

By my count, Billy Napier will be the 10th former Nick Saban assistant to land an SEC head job, and the third at Florida (most in the conference).

Saban is 24-1 against his former assistants.

— Zach Barnett (@zach_barnett) November 28, 2021

As the tweet noted, Napier is the 10th former Nick Saban assistant to land a SEC head coaching position, which is pretty mind-blowing. What a lot of teams fail to understand though, is that just because a coach works with Nick Saban, that he’s not going to be as good of a coach as the future Hall-of-Famer.

Many teams make the mistake of overvaluing coaching trees. There is a reason there is only one Bill Belichick and one Nick Saban. The skills both men possess are incredibly, incredibly rare.

That being said, Napier did an excellent job at Louisiana-Lafayette. He catapulted the Ragin Cajuns to their highest ranking in school history in 2020, a No. 19 ranking in the College Football Playoff poll. His team was very balanced in 2020, ranking 29th nationally in scoring offense (33.9 points per game) and their defense ranked 31st in scoring defense (22.0 points per game). The Ragin’ Cajuns also ranked 33rd in total defense (355.4 yards per game). He’s one of the hottest up-and-coming coaching commodities and that attention is well warranted.

Not only that, Napier’s ULL team in 2020 produced 14 selections on the All- Sun Belt team, including first-team selection, running back Elijah Mitchell.

Saban vs. his former assistants

The tough task for Napier is he’ll now have to face his former mentor. The only former Nick Saban assistant to beat the man himself was Jimbo Fisher this season at Texas A&M. Saban has an insanely good record against his former assistants, 24-1.

One coach that has coached with Saban and Belichick that has been mentioned for head coaching positions this off-season is current Alabama assistant Bill O’Brien. Many Alabama fans would beg to differ with the recent attention for O’Brien, considering Alabama only scored three points for much of the contest against Auburn on Saturday night.

The coaching carousel for the 2021 off-season has just begun to spin and there will be many more twists and turns along the way. Buckle up.