Nick Saban credits assistants for his 'best coaching job' at Alabama

For the second straight year, it’s been the same question at Alabama. Is this Nick Saban’s best coaching job?

This season started out bumpy with a 10-point home loss to Texas in Week 2 and saw Jalen Milroe wind up on the sidelines for the next game against USF. Fast-forward a couple months, and Alabama is now getting ready for the SEC Championship against Georgia and Milroe looks like a completely different quarterback, leading the Crimson Tide into Atlanta.

That’s quite the turnaround, and many have given Saban his flowers to getting things on track. But on the Crimson Tide Sports Network’s SEC Championship Preview Show on Thursday, he wasn’t ready to call this his best performance in Tuscaloosa. Instead, he shifted the credit to his staff.

“As a coach — good and bad, we’ve had our share of bad — I look at it like, you’re a teacher,” Saban said. “And a teacher teaches young people, whatever grade they’re in, and then they usually have a test, and how do they do on a test? Well, most teachers that are really good would say, ‘I did a really good job of teaching if the result is really good on the test.’ Some teachers would say, ‘Not my fault they didn’t do well on the test. They didn’t apply themselves.’ But the key to the drill is getting everybody to apply themselves. That’s the key to the drill, and getting everybody to respond, to do things.

“But really, the coaches, our coaches on our staff, they are the guys that are actually the teachers. I’m a teacher, too, because I like to coach the players, so I coach the players. Some people in my position don’t. But they need to get credit for what they have been able to do as teachers to get the players to respond at their position.”

Nick Saban: The next question for Alabama is, ‘How do they do on the test?’

Saban pointed to multiple positions that took steps forward this year. At the beginning of the year, the offensive line was a huge question mark and allowed 26 sacks through the first six games. Since then, that number is 13 sacks allowed over the last six matchups.

Saban also called out Milroe’s improvement, as well as that of the receivers, and the defense’s ability to stay strong despite multiple key injuries. He said the players are looking strong — and they now have to pass the “test.”

“Whether it’s the offensive line getting better, whether it’s the quarterback getting better, the receivers all got better. We’ve held our own on defense even though we’ve had a lot of injuries to some key guys that are kind of the leaders out there, in a way. The other guys have stepped up and filled in and we’ve been able to hold our own,” Nick Saban said. “You’ve got to give a lot of credit to the coaches who are the teachers who are teaching these guys every day. And then, how do they do on the test? That’s the key to the drill.

“A lot of the times, I don’t feel like I’m doing as good of a job as I want to do. But that’s me being who I am in terms of always thinking I could do a little bit better, or is there something I didn’t cover, or could I explain this better or something. But it’s the perfectionist that makes you who you are, but it also makes you hard to live with sometimes.”