Would CNS Have Done Any Better This Year than CKD with the same roster???
- Thread starter BamaMoon
- Start date
If we look at the NFL a high percentage of Head Coaches have complex play sheets in their hands and they are tied to the OC in the booth calling plays. I would be looking for a very cerebral guy like Sark who is deeply involved in play calling. difficult to see anyone being successful in modern football in a CEO capacity.
and part of it is because of the system already being in place for a long time and part of it is also due to his experience in another part of it would be due to the fact he would not have lost a bunch of those guys that went to the portal.
Furthermore, people seem to want to forget that we were one miracle fourth down conversion against Auburn away from not even making the playoffs last year. I always get a bit miffed when Alabama fans can always note that in 2022, we were two plays from being undefeated, but they always ignore that we were also two plays from being a four-loss team.
In 2023, we were 12-1 and made the tourney. But we were also 3 plays away from being 8-4; I didn’t count the one-score win over Georgia because if we had lost any of those other three games, we would’ve been playing Georgia. It’s like too many folks think we had constant regular seasons like 2011 or 2018 and ignore the fact we had four close calls plus a loss in 2021. Indeed, if Tank Bigsby stays in bounds and Milroe doesn’t hit Bond, we have no playoff appearances in Saban’s last 3 years AND we have 3 straight road losses at Auburn.
Let me be clear: that does not absolve the current head coach of the fact he has some problems to fix, some that will be easier to repair than others. This will be a critical year for him and how much progress we see this year may tell us what the path is going forward.
But let’s not pretend that NIL and some bad coaching hires of his own were not aspects that hung over Saban’s final three years here. Indeed, I honestly wonder if it had not been Alabama faced off with an unbeaten Florida state in 2023 whether we would have made that playoff or not.
I went back and listened to DeBoer's press conference after the Georgia game to hear again how he handled our best moment of the season. I was trying to understand perhaps why we lost to some teams we shouldn't have and I think the PC was different than how Saban would have handled it. Sure, I understand DeBoer and Saban are different personalities so there would be differences but while DeBoer was giving Georgia a lot of credit for coming back in the 2nd half I think Saban would be saying we played poorly in the 2nd half and almost lost a game we had won. While DeBoer said Georgia was a very good team Saban would probably say our guys got to learn the game is 60 minutes, not 30. IOW Saban was always more critical of our play in games like that during postgame PC's than DeBoer was and maybe if that lack of criticism carried over into practice it would explain why we had some poor results against some weaker teams. Just my theory.
Last season, Saban needed a miracle to beat Auburn, was one play away from being upset by Arkansas (4-8), held a touchdown lead over an AAC school in the 4th quarter and was embarrassed by Texas at home.
People forget how "the sky was falling" last year because of how dangerously close Saban came to losing to three awful teams. And that was with the luxury of the 40+ players who transferred or went pro like Downs, Amos, Niblack, Latham, Key Eboigbe, Turner, Arnold, Kool-Aid, etc.
I think the most telling aspect of Saban‘stenure at Alabama is sustaining the dynasty. I don’t think people understand how difficult that truly was. Three in four had been done (in a different time) by Notre Dame in the 40s and Nebraska in the 90s, both cases a time when it was much easier to do that difficult accomplishment.
And Dabo came within a score in 15 or a better half in 19 from doing the same thing.
But look at Clemson now in an easier conference.
The greatest accomplishment Saban pulled at Alabama on the football field, was sustaining and reconstructing the Dynasty BEYOND what a normal dynasty entails in CFB. This regression is why so many people, and I will confess to being one myself, thought our Dynasty died that night against Ole Miss in 2015. It was simple math and what we had all watched happen previously. Remember, also that Alabama had a unique challenge that no other Dynasty had, the one team that won the championship in the years. Alabama didn’t out of those four just happened to be in the same small state and competing for the same pool of players.
Kirby is about to find out whether he can do it or not, and he has even more unique challenges than Saban had.
And Dabo came within a score in 15 or a better half in 19 from doing the same thing.
But look at Clemson now in an easier conference.
The greatest accomplishment Saban pulled at Alabama on the football field, was sustaining and reconstructing the Dynasty BEYOND what a normal dynasty entails in CFB. This regression is why so many people, and I will confess to being one myself, thought our Dynasty died that night against Ole Miss in 2015. It was simple math and what we had all watched happen previously. Remember, also that Alabama had a unique challenge that no other Dynasty had, the one team that won the championship in the years. Alabama didn’t out of those four just happened to be in the same small state and competing for the same pool of players.
Kirby is about to find out whether he can do it or not, and he has even more unique challenges than Saban had.
Yeah, you can pretty much throw out dedication and loyalty to a certain team. Now it's just $$$$$$ and "if I don't like it, or get enough cash, I'll just go somewhere else". How can any coach, even Saban and Kirby build and maintain a team. The only ones that can are the ones with a pile of cash to use.
Saban was always looking for a problem to fix. He actually didn't like it when it looked like nothing was wrong, because he understood there was always something wrong, it was just a matter of whether or not he could get other people to see the need to address it.
This doesn't mean nothing ever went wrong, of course a lot of things still went wrong but I don't think many things went wrong that Saban didn't see coming. Saban was never comfortable and I don't think he ever wanted his team to be as well. And yes, I think that's probably why he hadn't lost to a team with a losing record since 1998 (while DeBoer has lost to 4 teams with losing records in his 5 years in the FBS). Along those lines, anyone who thinks Saban would have lost to Oklahoma is massively underestimating him.
Now, in all fairness I think DeBoer has a ceiling that's probably about as high as Saban's, he's clearly capable of winning big games. It's the lesser games that keep tripping him up.
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I still find it weird that everyone wants to say Saban would have never lost to a team like Vanderbilt but yet his first year in the SEC he lost to UAB 13-10.
I find it weird that you think that even slightly makes the case that Saban would have lost to Vandy this season, with these players.
With Milroe… anything is possible. The 2023 Auburn game is proof.
This is a serious problem, although I think we oversell the alleged “loyalty” of folks in the past who didn’t have the same opportunity. If modern pay for play and portal would’ve existed during the Great Depression (when Bryant was on campus) or even during that great run we had in the early 90s, how many players would we have been able to hold onto? Worse, how far more crippling would a probation with no bowls have been in that setup?
Even granting that the concept of the student-athlete was (for the most part) always a myth, we still lost something that meant a lot to a lot of people. I think we overstate the assumptions of loyalty on behalf of people never granted the same opportunities. Not that someone offered one dollar more would go somewhere but if it improved their situation immensely - most folks are going to take it. It’s like that time Bob Woodward offered a million bucks to Patrick Swayze’s widow for one night of passion and Woody Boyd became a natural born killer.
Yeah and one is UAB under strict limitations and the other is a Vandy squad under no limitations.
I was referring to how things looked different post 2020 when CNS was still the coach. Less discipline, more penalties, less attention to details....they were there when CNS was still the coach.
Most of that carried over this year. Now let's see if CKD can fix it going forward.
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With these players? Don't forget,) that last season, Saban had "these players" plus the added luxury of Downs, Amos, Niblack, Latham, Key Eboigbe, Turner, Arnold, Kool-Aid, etc. and was one play away from losing to two significantly worse teams than this year's Vandy.
Yes, kinda the point of the thread. And "with these players" CNS is hamstringed a bit compared to his normal "superior talent."
People are hung up on the Vandy loss because, historically, they are typically a pushover, easy win. But that was not your dad's Vandy team this year!
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