PonyExpress

I am not a psychoanalayst, but in order to defeat your enemy you have to crawl inside his brain-housing group and see what ticks. As a result, i have been paying some attention to the Dolphins: Watching Saban's press conferences, reading his interviews, gauging the attitude of the players and the team and I think I have pretty much drawn my conclusions about who Nick Saban is as a coach.
Fist of all, Saban is a complete egomaniac who loves to hear himself talk. He can't get enough of it. He thinks he is brilliant, a real senior professor of football, and enjoys pontificating in front of large audiences. He likes to use his hands when he speaks, as though they help to lead the smaller minds around him along to understand his grandiose ideas. From his acquisitions, he believes he can take any player, no matter how spotty his background, and transform him by force of will into an A+ student, the attitude of the benevolent dictator. He has some personal charisma, which has infected the Miami team with a kind of confident swagger. He has instituted a program with a real purpose and has his own "newspeak", using catch phrases of his own invention, like "Invest in the process" and other gobbledygook, which the players seem to have accepted for the time being. Also, as he has grown more comfortable in his position his former reluctance to speak to the press has melted away, and he now can't speak to them enough, loving to put his brilliance on display.
What separates him from BB, is that Saban is more charismatic, but also more egomaniacal and therefore less humble and grounded. Therefore I suspect that his success, when he achieves it will not be as consistent or enduring as BB's, but will flame out when players realize he is full of goose-poop. The closest comparison I believe there is in the league to Saban is Mike Shanahan. I see Saban as a Mike Shanahan clone, with the same strengths and one major weakness, the belief he can shine ***** with sheer force of his "messianic" will.

Brady-To-Branch

Unlike BB, this is Saban's first NFL HC job. Moreover, he doesn't seem to have a strong personnel guy like BB has in Pioli. They may share similar philosophies in defense, but personnel-wise, I haven't been all that impressed with his moves.

JMHO

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shakadave

Just popped in to nominate "A Psychoanalysis of Nick Saban" as the best thread title of recent weeks.

BTW I think/hope you're chasing the wrong enemy here. Broncos, Steelers, Colts all give me more to worry about than Miami.

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Please, God, don't let us ever suck as bad as the 2011 Cowboys did in the Jets opener.
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"I got a little shine on and showed you guys a little taste of my speed."

----Vince Wilfork, Jan. 7, 2007

RayClay

College coaches often turn around "bad seeds" looking for a father figure. Look at Pete Carrolls championship teams now unraveling.

What Saban doesn't understand and seasoned pros like BB do, is this doesn't work in the pros.

Reason one money. Give a fool money and he only becomes a mega fool.

Freedom. These guys are not in a dorm room singing Kum-Baya.

They are out on the street trying to spend reason 1.

Good luck Nick.

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stcjones

good overall analysis......I am not impressed with Saban at all yet. If you remember when the doofins were 3-7.......they were ready to run Saban out of town.....now they win their remaining 6 games (4 out of 6 against 4-12 teams, and 1 against our scrubs) and all fo a sudden they are going to put a statue of Saban up next to Shula's.........I don't think Saban is 1/4 the genius and incredible coach that BB is.........apples and oranges.....one man's opinion

R_T26

saban is a man who wrote a book about coaching before he ever even won anything.

patriotsrule

Don't I remember the Pats beating the Jets twice, the Bills and the Saints in their final six games? I wouldn't talk about beating up on poor competition last year because the Patriots lived off of it and that's just a fact.

MoLewisrocks

In reading over your analysis I found myself nodding - basically nailed him.

PatsFanInVa

1) BB went out of his way not to hire morons. From what I've read, he respects Saban's intelligence and football knowledge (not the case with Parcells, who thought BB was doomed to never be a head coach because of his charisma gap.)

2) I will give you this: it might be (and I emphasize "might") that a "football nerd's football nerd," the kind necessary to run a BB-level program, might necessarily manifest in an essentially introverted personality, like BB's. This is not in any way proven. It could well be that Saban just believes that shmoozing with press (or rebelling against same, or using the press to deliver misinformation, which may be his current tack,) is useful, whereas BB believes that any interaction with the press could give an adversary an edge. Further, we have no proof that a propagandist using the football press is inherently less likely to be successful than a hermit avoiding it.

3) It is a settled issue - Saban is what he is, BB is what he is. That one is a "better" style of personality is as disfunctional a belief as Parcells' belief that Belichick did not have the "charisma" to go beyond an assistant coach position.

4) Are they drinking the kool-aid in Miami? That's all that matters, not whether we like Saban's style in NE (or in my case, in VA.)

The point here is, that we have a winning model based on a very intelligent, but somewhat introverted guy, and have therefore made a quantum leap to the belief that all winning models are based on such guys. There use to be a belief that winning fed on itself, was all about swagger, etc. I find it refreshing to see a BB win it all 3 times in 5 years. That does not mean that there cannot be other intelligent coaches out there who look a bit more camera-friendly than our own fearless leader.

Yeah, give me BB any day. Jury is still out on Saban though.

PFnV

PonyExpress

I am not suggesting that Saban is not a threat to be reckoned with. In fact my interest in him is based on the fact I consider him a threat. In fact, most NFL coaches are egomanical schmoozes who love the sound of their own voices. I equate them very closely with Military Generals, or possibly colonels, who often are incredibly infatuated with themselves, and have a bunch of theories on life and vapid catch-phrases. This in no way suggests these types are not successful. In fact, they are often highly successful, but no less absurd. In fact, I expect a Shanahan/Parcells type of success from Saban: Shanahan in his crazy desire to collect turd players, and Parcells in his ability to burn out a team in a relatively short period with his barely tolerable schtick.