Nick Saban details plan with new defensive coaching staff

Alabama head coach Nick Saban is overseeing a new defensive staff in 2023. This came after defensive coordinator Pete Golding left for the same position with Ole Miss. From there, Saban hired Kevin Steele to take over as the team’s defensive coordinator.

That wasn’t the only change, though. Charles Kelly also moved on, forcing Travarius Robinson into a larger role. Now, as spring practice gets underway, Saban detailed his plan with a new defensive coaching staff.

“Well, T-Rob has been here for a year,” Nick Saban said. “I think he’s a really good coach. He’s been a coordinator before. I think he’s really capable.”

“So, Kevin Steele is going to walk around, basically, so we have an inside backer coach, an outsider backer coach, a d-line coach, and a secondary coach. Then, you got me walking around and I don’t know what exactly I contribute but I’ll be out there walking around doing something.”

Kevin Steele came to Alabama from Miami, where he was the defensive coordinator. Prior to that, he held the same role at Auburn and LSU. He has also been an interim head coach at Tennessee and Auburn as well as being the head coach at Baylor. On top of that, Steele has worked on staff at Alabama with Nick Saban before.

“And, they’re still trying to find something I can do, but I’m going to try and do something,” Nick Saban explained. “But that’s really kind of how we’re organized.”

Nick Saban explained his approach

Every year is a little bit different and no matter how much success he has had, Nick Saban knows that having a consistent approach is important. So, he makes sure to approach every season like it’s his first.

“I’ve said this before, but I look at every season like I just took the job. So if I just took the job, what would we have? We’d have new coaches, we’d have new leadership, we’d have to create a new culture on this team. We’d have to create new leadership on our team from players, as well as coaches. I would have to make sure that the coaches really understood the culture and the system that we wanted to play, whether it was offense, defense or special teams,” Nick Saban said.

“It’s great to have continuity, especially in leadership positions. But this is not something that we don’t have some experience at making sort of adaptations, being flexible, betting people add things that they know will be beneficial to us, contribute to how we can fix some of the problems that we’ve had in the past.”