Nick Saban and Bill Belichick: Revisiting Alabama football, Patriots coaches' relationship
Both the college football and NFL worlds underwent seismic shifts this week, with Nick Saban retiring from Alabama and Bill Belichick splitting with the New England Patriots.
Two giants of their sport, with 12 championships (six each) between them, are going to give way to new faces on the Alabama and New England sidelines, respectively. The big question now, of course, is who those faces are going to be.
Saban and Belichick are both defensive-minded coaches who have crossed paths a few times throughout their coaching careers, all in the pros. Belichick, of course, never spent time coaching in college, whereas Saban's stint in the NFL was brief. He coached two seasons with the Miami Dolphins in the AFC East, the same division Belichick's Patriots dominated for the better part of two decades.
MORE: Relive Nick Saban's epic Alabama football coaching career with our special book!
Here's a look at the connections between the two throughout their illustrious careers.
Did Nick Saban and Bill Belichick coach together?
Belichick's Browns staff from 1991-95 is the stuff of legends. And among those legends is Saban.
Saban served as Belichick's defensive coordinator from 1991 to 1994. He left after the 1994 season, when the Browns finally broke through and won a playoff game. The two parted ways with a great deal of personal respect for each other.
"There's no one I respect more in football than Nick Saban," Belichick said years later on NFL Films. "And I don't think there's anybody that's a better coach than Nick Saban. Because Nick? He does everything well.
"To be able to do it twice (at the time) in terms of national championships, but he had great success at Michigan State as well. And he would've had great success in Miami (with the Dolphins) had he stayed there, I have no doubt about that."
On Belichick, Saban was similarly lauding.
“One of the things I liked most about working for you,” he told Belichick, “I knew exactly what to expect [and] what you expected from me. I worked other places and that was never, ever clearly defined. It’s amazing to me how many people work with or for someone and it’s just assumed that they know what you’d like them for them to do.
"I thought that whether it was the players that we brought to the team, the people that worked in personnel or whatever, you defined for them and then you let them do their job.”
Nick Saban-Bill Belichick Browns tenure
Saban and Belichick didn't enjoy the wild success one might think they would have on the same sideline, but they were at different points in their careers at the time.
In four seasons together, the duo went 6-10, 7-9, 7-9, and finally 11-5. In 1994, they made the playoffs and defeated the Patriots 20-13 before losing to the Steelers 29-9.
After that playoff berth, Saban went on to join Michigan State, and Belichick's Browns went 5-11 before he was fired following Art Modell's absconsion to Baltimore. Belichick went to be an assistant for Bill Parcells and the Patriots and eventually joined as their head coach. The rest, as they say, is history.
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Nick Saban NFL coaching record vs. Bill Belichick
Saban's NFL head coaching career was brief, but he did face Belichick four times in his two seasons in Miami.
Saban was with the Dolphins in 2005 and 2006 and, as division rivals with the Patriots, the two clashed twice a year. Saban split the series with Belichick at 2-2.
Here's a look at their matchup history:
Nov. 13, 2005: Patriots 23, Dolphins 16
Jan. 1, 2006: Dolphins 28, Patriots 26
Oct. 8, 2006: Patriots 20, Dolphins 10
Dec. 10, 2006: Dolphins 21, Patriots 0
The Dolphins went 9-7 and 6-10 in Saban's two seasons, before he returned to college football to coach Alabama.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Revisiting Nick Saban, Bill Belichick's football coaching connections
