Nick Saban, who retired on Wednesday as Alabama’s head football coach, will go down as one of the greatest college football coaches of all time.
Winner of seven national championships (six at Alabama, one at LSU), Saban’s name will be mentioned along all-time greats such as Bear Bryant, Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy, Bobby Bowden and Woody Hayes, among others depending on your preferred era and geographic loyalties.
Saban also is on a less desirable list: successful college football coaches who were failures as NFL head coaches. That list includes the likes of Urban Meyer, Steve Spurrier, Dennis Erickson and Lou Holtz.
Nick Saban coached the Miami Dolphins
A year after winning a national championship at LSU, Saban opted to take his coaching talents to the next level. He had NFL experience as an assistant, most notably as defensive coordinator of the Bill Belichick-coached Cleveland Browns. However, this was his first foray into NFL head coaching. It did not go well.
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The Dolphins did manage a winning record in Saban’s first season (9-7 in 2005), narrowly missing the playoffs. However, things went south fast after that.
Ahead of the 2006 season, the Dolphins were in search of a starting quarterback. The team considered Drew Brees, but opted to trade for Daunte Culpepper instead. Both quarterbacks were nursing injuries (Brees a shoulder injury; Culpepper a knee injury). The Dolphins shipped a second-round draft pick to the Minnesota Vikings (in case you were curious, that pick was used on center Ryan Cook) in order to acquire Culpepper. Culpepper never really recovered from his knee injury and started just four games in 2006, winning one.
What happened with Nick Saban, the Dolphins and Drew Brees?
Choosing Culpepper over Brees turned into one of the greatest personnel boondoggles in NFL history. Culpepper never came close to reaching the Pro Bowl level of play that he enjoyed during his time in Minnesota, and was out of the NFL by 2010.
Brees ultimately signed with the New Orleans Saints, and proceeded to lift a once-downtrodden franchise to its first Super Bowl win and later rewrite the NFL record book.
Had the Dolphins opted for Brees instead of Culpepper, maybe Saban’s NFL coaching career would not have landed on the ‘college coaches who failed in the NFL’ list. Saban recently commented on this ‘what if’ scenario, saying the decision to bypass Brees for Culpepper prompted his move away from Miami.
‘I decided right then when that happened that we don’t have a quarterback in the NFL, we’re not going to win,’ Saban told 247sports.com. ‘I’m getting out of here. I’m not staying here.’
Saban’s Dolphins finished 6-10 in 2006, finishing last in the AFC East. Even before the end of that season, talk swirled over Saban going to Alabama after the school fired head coach Mike Shula. In early January 2007, it was official and college football would never be the same.
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