Nick Saban responds to criticism about abandoning the heavy-jumbo run package

Nick Saban is, arguably, the greatest college coach ever and he is certainly the best modern coach. A key reason for his success has been his ability to adapt to the changing times. That can be off-field things, like how you use the transfer portal to build your roster. Change can also occur on the field, like adopting new offensive philosophies.

While appearing on Hey Coach & The Nick Saban Show, a fan called in. They asked why Alabama doesn’t run as many heavy-jumbo packages anymore, particularly in short yardage. Saban then jumped on the opportunity to respond to the criticism.

“We actually did it last year, and didn’t do it very successfully,” Nick Saban replied.

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“We didn’t have a big guy, per se, like Cody or one of the guys that you mentioned, A’Shawn Robinson or somebody like that, that we would use in a situation like that. There could be the possibility that we have some guys that we could do that with this year,” Nick Saban teased. “But when we got into big people last year, we got stuffed. We didn’t get any movement up front. We got stuffed.”

After that, Nick Saban explained why it’s actually easier to stop power formations in the modern game than a spread formation. Essentially, in space, you have more options to defend. When you’re grouped together, you’re easier to contain.

“You know, I think the game has changed in a way that, like I’m a defensive guy so one of the most difficult things you have to defend now when you get down inside the 10-yard line is the more they wad people up, the more difficult it is for them to run because you’re wadding your people up. Then, you got pretty physical people and you can knock them back.”

“People that stay spread out, and create extra run gaps and then run RPOs when you’re trying to play eight or nine men fronts, and the ball meshes and somebody runs a slant out here, and the guys got the A-gap and they’re throwing a slant right where he’s supposed to be–that day and age of football is much more difficult to defend than the old, what I call wadball.”

That wadball, as Nick Saban calls it, is old-school power football. It’s sometimes known as three yards and a cloud of dust. Basically, it bunches all your players close to the ball at the start of the play.

“There’s good and bad in both,” Nick Saban concluded.