Alabama head coach Nick Saban met with the press on Tuesday morning at SEC media days and was asked about his two losses to former Crimson Tide assistants in 2021.
Saban entered the 2021 season with an unblemished record going up against his former assistant coaches. By the time the clock struck zeroes on January 10, Saban’s record was 25-2 against his former guys.
That’s because his Crimson Tide lost to Jimbo Fisher and the Texas A&M Aggies in October and then again to Kirby Smart and Georgia in the national title game.
Fisher served as Saban’s offensive coordinator at LSU and Smart was the defensive coordinator at Alabama under Saban.
Saban was asked about those two losses on Tuesday:
“Well, I think, first of all, all the coaches who have had opportunities to go on and be head coaches in Division I, I’m very proud of. I think they all did an outstanding job for us. They all had goals and aspirations that motivated them to do an outstanding job because they wanted to be head coaches. I’m happy for them and their family that they got that opportunity.
Sooner or later these people that get these opportunities would get in situations where they had a chance to have nationally recognized, nationally powerful, whatever you want to call it, top-ranked teams like Georgia was last year, like Texas will be I’m sure very soon with Sark being the head coach there, the staff that he has, the job that they’re doing.”
Leading up to the January 10 national title game, Saban was 4-0 against Smart’s Bulldogs. But in each of those four games Georgia was in a great position to win. Those four games that Georgia lost accumulated a total of 240 minutes of football. Out of those 240 minutes, Georgia held the lead over Alabama for 171 of those minutes — 71% of the time, according to Sports Illustrated.
It felt like no matter how close Georgia came, Smart was never going to beat Alabama for as long as Saban was in Tuscaloosa. Questionable coaching decisions and silly mistakes haunted Georgia against the Tide for four years and you just got the sense that Alabama had UGA’s number.
Beating Saban in the national title was a huge milestone for Smart but was not surprising to Saban.
“This is not something that is surprising to me,” Saban continued.
“A lot of people are at really, really good schools. They’ve done a really, really good job. They’ve used their own personal imprint to maybe take a few things that they learned that we do that helped us be successful along with their imprint of what they want to do so they can have successful programs.
This is not a surprise to me. It was sort of expected actually. I’m happy to see each and every one of those guys do extremely well. Not extremely well against Alabama, but extremely well (smiling). I’m kind of proud of the fact that there are some of our coaches who have got some of the most successful programs in the country.”
Georgia and Alabama are not slated to play again during the 2022 regular season, but don’t be surprised to see the two square off again for an epic rematch in the SEC Championship Game.
