Nick Saban saw a watershed moment coming in college football and adapted. Can Bill Belichick do the same in the NFL before it’s too late?
Saban and Belichick are considered by many to be the best ever at what they do. Yet, it’s hard not to notice the completely different directions their two institutions are headed as 2021 nears.
The Alabama Crimson Tide are heading back to the College Football Playoff and are the favorites to win a sixth title under Saban. Belichick and the New England Patriots, meanwhile, will miss the NFL playoffs for the first time since 2008.
There’s a lot of work to be done for Belichick and the Patriots to reclaim their status as Super Bowl favorites. But if Belichick wants a few pointers on how to completely reinvent on the fly, he might want to give his old buddy Saban a ring.
Saban is a defensive mastermind. NFL All-Pro teams are littered with Alabama alums on the defensive side of the ball. From 2010 to 2019, the Crimson Tide finished no worse than sixth in all of college football in points allowed per game, leading the country four times.
This season, however, is a slightly different situation.
Alabama finished 20th in points allowed per game this season. Certainly still good but an undeniable tumble down the team stats page.
Of course, no one’s really talking about Alabama’s defense this year, are they? Saban’s offense is what has everyone in Tuscaloosa excited. Alabama scored 547 points over 11 games this season — 53 more points than Clemson, which finished second in the country. Only Kent State scored more points per game than Bama and the Golden Flashes did so in just four MAC games.
After finishing no better than 15th in points per game between 2010 and 2018, the Tide has finished second and third the last two years in scoring. Alabama has the nation’s top receiver (DeVonta Smith), arguably the top running back (Najee Harris) and a quarterback (Mac Jones) projected to be the second Alabama QB drafted in the first round in as many years.
The Tide’s offensive renaissance isn’t by accident.
“It used to be that good defense beats good offense,” Saban told ESPN earlier this season. “Good defense doesn’t beat good offense anymore. … That’s not the way it used to be. It used to be if you had a good defense, other people weren’t going to score. You were always going to be in the game.
“I’m telling you. It ain’t that way anymore.”
Making a direct correlation between the college game and the pro game is an imperfect process. That being said, what happens in the college game eventually makes it to the NFL, begging the question: Will Belichick — or can Belichick — make the same sort of adjustments Saban has made at Alabama?
The Patriots missed the playoffs because their offense is a dumpster fire. New England has gone two games without scoring an offensive touchdown. It ranks 21st in yards per play, 27th in points per game and 29th in red-zone scoring.
Good defense doesn’t beat good offense anymore … I’m telling you it ain’t that way anymore.
–Nick Saban
It’s a legitimately bad offense, and it’s not just because Tom Brady is doing the snowbird thing in Tampa Bay now. Awful draft capital management on the offensive side of the ball has finally come back to roost, and without Brady to mask the blemishes, New England’s ugly offensive face is bare for all to see.
Just look at this list of non-quarterback skill players the Patriots have drafted in the first three rounds since 2011:
WR N’Keal Harry
RB Damien Harris
RB Sony Michel
WR Aaron Dobson
RB Shane Vereen
RB Stevan Ridley
That’s pretty bad.
The obvious and natural retort must be considered: The Patriots have won three Super Bowls in that time. That’s fair.
But New England is at a crossroads here. The franchise doesn’t have a quarterback of the future, and it doesn’t have a single game-changing offensive weapon who will keep defensive coordinators up at night.
If Belichick the general manager decides to reinvest in the offense — through the draft or free agency — it will be fascinating to see the way in which he tries to do so, given the late-career preferences of Belichick the head coach.
“He takes these players that you haven’t really heard much about and all of a sudden, they’re making plays in the biggest games of the year,” then-Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer said back in 2017. “I started asking him about it, and he made this point to me and I shared it with our team. He said, ‘At this point in my career, I want to coach guys I like. I want to coach guys I want to be around, and that’s it. He said,’ I’m not going to coach anybody else.'”
If Belichick wants to rest on his laurels and surround himself with people he “likes,” he’s earned that right. But that has obviously limitations when it comes to building a winning team.
Now, more than ever, Belichick — a defensive wizard in his own right — must be willing to change and put a greater emphasis on building an offense able to compete in the modern NFL, a league that is looking more and more like college ball by the day. Sometimes, getting uncomfortable precedes success.
“I don’t like it,” Saban also told ESPN, “but we just have to make sure we have an offense that’s that way and that explosive, which we have.”
If Belichick and the Patriots don’t follow suit, it’s fair to wonder whether it might be a while before New England is playing at the same championship level the football world has come to expect for the last 20 years.
