Nick Saban Just Retired. Who’s Alabama’s Most Saban-Like Choice to Succeed Him?
I checked each of the leading names on Alabama’s candidate list to see who coaches the most like the original.
Shockwaves rippled across college football on Wednesday evening when it was reported that Alabama’s Nick Saban, arguably the greatest coach in college football history, was stepping away from the game. Saban leaves after a 28-year run — including the past 17 seasons with the Crimson Tide — that saw him win a record seven national championships and 11 SEC titles.
It wasn’t long after the shock wore off, though, that fans and analysts started thinking about what’s next for Bama. So we thought we’d toss our houndstooth hat into the ring and help guide the process by finding the active coaches most similar to Saban in their careers, based on how well their typical offenses and defenses (including passing and rushing) match up with Saban’s resume.
Here’s a ranking of the betting favorites to replace Saban, ordered by their teams’ similarity to those of the legendary coach himself:
Out of all the candidates to step into Saban’s shoes, Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman has coached the most similar teams during his three-year stint at South Bend. Saban’s calling card was always defense, and Notre Dame has ranked in the 86th percentile nationally in scoring defense under Freeman; even more importantly, his passing defenses have ranked in the 95th percentile at preventing opposing yards per attempt, which is far better than any other candidate on the list (and even outpaces Saban’s own rating for his career). Only Saban protege Kirby Smart, who probably won’t be leaving Georgia for Alabama, ranks as more similar among active coaches.
Freeman isn’t the only top candidate who has done a solid Saban impression. Ohio State’s Ryan Day and Clemson’s Dabo Swinney are, unsurprisingly, also high on the list thanks to their commitment to stout defense with offensive upside. And Oregon’s Dan Lanning, who might be the most likely coach to succeed Saban if you believe the reporting, ranks seventh among all active coaches in our similarity score, despite coaching teams that are more offensively biased than the typical Saban outfit.
Further down the list, we find a lower tier of coaches who have Saban connections, like former Bama assistants Steve Sarkisian and Lane Kiffin, or general hot coaching commodities like Washington’s Kalen DeBoer and Florida State’s Mike Norvell. But if the idea is to create a continuity of coaching styles in Tuscaloosa with the next coach, none have quite emphasized defense as much as Saban did.
And at the bottom of the list (among active coaches at least), we find Florida’s Billy Napier — who also hasn’t coached very Saban-like defenses at all — and Colorado’s Deion Sanders. Sanders has appeared in commercials with Saban and is every bit a match for the outgoing coach in star power, though we don’t have much of a sample in FBS to judge his Saban-style coaching bona fides. The Buffaloes graded out as a very un-Saban-like 21st percentile in adjusted scoring defense last season, though that was actually an improvement on their 5th-percentile showing in 2022.
The oddsmakers also tossed some non-active coaches into the mix — and one looks particularly interesting by our metric. As much as his last coaching stint was an unmitigated catastrophe, Urban Meyer’s similarity index would place fifth among active coaches (just ahead of Swinney) if he was ranked among that group. Meyer is one of the few coaches who could say he had a .500 record against Saban head-to-head, even though his defenses never quite resided in the same lofty echelons as those of his rival.
One thing is for certain: Whoever replaces Saban will have a long shadow looming over them. Saban himself stepped into a program that was once one of the most dominant in college football history, but had fallen on hard times in the decade leading up to his arrival. Tasked with revitalizing the Crimson Tide, Saban succeeded almost immediately. Now his successor will have a different, but just as difficult task — keeping the legacy of Saban’s storied tenure going into the rest of the 2020s and beyond.
Filed under: College Football