Coach Saban's Combine Press Conference

[DolFan619]

Saban Speaks at Combine

Here is a Dolphins-provided transcript of what coach Nick Saban had to say during a Friday news conference at the NFL Scouting Combine:

(Opening Remarks) – “As coaches we all appreciate what you do professionally for our players, for the National Football League, for the game of football. I think it’s very important that we have such a conduit of people who spend so much time trying to get the right information to our fans and to the public. That is what spurs the interest that makes this game so special. I certainly thank you and hope you all know that we very much appreciate that.

“It’s great to be back in Indy. I think this is a tremendous opportunity for all of us as coaches and scouts to get an opportunity to see so many good football players in one setting. I also think it’s a tremendous opportunity for all these young college players to actually show what they can do even though this is a very grueling and challenging experience for them over a three or four-day period to try to perform effectively and put their best foot forward so that they can make a positive impression on the teams in the National Football League.

“Many people asked, ‘what did you encourage your players to do when you were in college?’ I certainly encouraged them to take advantage of every opportunity that they had, do everything that they could possibly do to try to make this a positive experience for them and something that would benefit their future. I would certainly encourage any player to do the same here.

“The focus of what we’re trying to do this offseason is, obviously, improve our team, whether it’s through systems analysis through making additional positive acquisitions in terms of coaches who can add knowledge and experience to our ability to help our players be successful, or whether it’s free agency, which we all have the opportunity to evaluate at this time. Those are the types of things that we are doing right now. This, for most of us, is the real kickoff where we really get, as coaches, knee-deep into what happens with the college draft. That’s our starting point.

“Obviously we’ve had a little news ourselves of late, relative to the Ricky Williams situation. You know that I can’t comment on that based on the confidentiality of the league and the rules that apply to a substance abuse policy. I can only say the same for this particular player that we would do for any player, relative to trying to help them be successful. We will certainly continue with that philosophy of how we try to work with all of our football players.

“Some people always like to ask me, ‘since you finished well last year won’t there be tremendous expectations for what you might accomplish next year?’ I think fans basically always have high expectations. They all want to win, they all want to be a supporter of something that is successful. It is certainly our goal as an organization to do the best we can to get our players to play winning football and give us the best opportunity to be successful. Obviously from just watching the Super Bowl and seeing some of the premier teams play in the playoffs this year, that’s the place that we’d like to be. But I think that expectations are not the motivating factor in terms of what we try to accomplish, but rather our ability to stay focused on what we need to do to continue to improve our team relative to the competency and the chemistry of the people who are going to be involved in that team so that we can have a good football team that can play winning football on a consistent basis and give us the opportunity to get involved in some of these things.

“Now, when it comes to making specific comments about players on our team or players on someone else’s team, first of all I think you know that I can’t make comments about players that are under contract someplace else. Let me put it to you this way, we will give you information and I will tell you the truth about that information whenever the time is right, but never will we put ourselves at a disadvantage, competitively, by giving information out before so it does not affect our competitive advantage or disadvantage. Maybe the example that I could give to you would be if we told the media that we were going to run a trick play that we had the ball in the fourth quarter. That would be great information. It would be great information for you and for the team we’re playing. If we tell you what free agents we’re interested in or what the situation is on some of the players on our team before we made those decisions, we do nothing but create problems that aren’t timely for us in terms of our ability to be competitive. I just hope you appreciate and can understand that when you start to ask me specific questions about some of these types of things. So, with that, I’ll let you ask questions.”

(On confidential information being released) – “I think that the unfortunate things is that we all have a professional responsibility and obligation as clubs to live by the confidentiality rules that are set up to protect the players. I have a lot of respect for the players and the rules that we have to protect the players. I’m sure that whatever organization, however this information got out, that the league and those people will take responsibility and they will give us an opportunity to hopefully make any change that is necessary so that is not a problem for any particular player in the future. I guess that’s how I really kind of feel about it. I will be proactive in trying to make changes that will be more protective of the players so that this doesn’t happen in the future to any player in the league.”

(On Ricky Williams) – “Ricky Williams did a fantastic job for us this year. If I was going to say, ‘who are the five guys that you enjoyed coaching the most in your however many years I’ve been coaching, college, pro, it doesn’t make any difference in terms of being a good guy, being a good person, being a hard worker, being a good team player, being a great competitor, in my coaching career,’ he would be one of the top guys I have ever been associated with in that way. Again, we’re just going to be supportive of trying to help him so he can be successful in his future in whatever way that might be.”

(On what he plans to do if he has to play without Ricky Williams n 2006) – “I’m not going to speculate on the future. This is something that is not necessarily etched in stone until the league makes some kind of ruling about it, which I’m not even sure of. So we’re not going to speculate on what we’re going to do, we’re just going to have to plan to give ourselves the best competitive advantage we possible can by what we need to do when those things get finalized.”

(On how he feels about the Williams situation) – “We want to support every player. I think every player knows that they are responsible for their own self-determination and what they do and what they don’t do. There is no question that in these kinds of cases and issues that is so, but as a coach I also feel the obligation to put every player in the best possible situation he can be in so that he can have success. So when you ask me how I feel, sometimes I feel like, ‘what else could we have done to make a more positive impact so that this kind of impact wouldn’t happen for any player?’ That’s what we will continue to try to do as an organization. It’s a little bit difficult the way the rules are, relative to the NFL, and we certainly don’t want to do anything to disrespect those rules, but we want to do everything that we can to help and support our players in the future so that we don’t have issues like this that would affect their ability to be successful long term.”

(On his conversations with Ricky Williams) – “He’s in India in a retreat and I totally respect that. I don’t discuss the kind of conversations that we have or I have with the players on our team. I think that is kind of between the coach and the player.”

(On if Ricky Williams should come back to the United States) -- “If there was something significant he could do that’s what we would encourage him to do if we felt that was the case. But I don’t think anybody has any proof that that would be beneficial.”

(On whether expressed his innocence about the accusations about him) – “I’m not supposed to commenting about this. Is that not right? Can we have any respect? I try to respect you guys, but you don’t respect what I ask you to do. I’m not supposed to be commenting about Ricky Williams’ situation based on the confidentiality rules of the league. Is that correct or incorrect? Did we state that and make that a ground rule?”

(On how the uncertainty of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement might affect his team’s plans for free agency) – “One of the reasons that I was interested to sit in on the Commissioner’s luncheon to hear him speak about it was to get a little bit of an update about the Collective Bargaining Agreement. There are issues to be resolved – there’s no doubt. I think we have extremely qualified, intelligent people who are going to make well, thought-out decisions that are looking somewhere between 5-10 years down the road that’s going to be beneficial to the players as well as something that the owners and the league can certainly live with; that’s why these are very difficult situations. Personally, we’ve tried to make a plan on how we would operate and what we would have to try to do if we didn’t have an agreement. And also try to get as much information as we can about if we did have an agreement or if we do have an agreement how exactly would that affect our ability to try to make some kind of improvement to complement the players that we have on our team right now. It is what it is. All we can do is mange the situation the best that we can. I think one of the things that if we don’t have an agreement this year, obviously it’s going to affect the cap this year in an adverse in way in terms of what’s available to spend on players.”

(On the addition of Mike Mularkey as offensive coordinator) – “Mike fits in extremely well. We were very pleased and happy to be able to get someone of Mike Mularkey’s caliber in terms of knowledge and experience. I’ve explained on several occasions that we’re not changing our offense and we’re not changing our defense. We have a Dolphin way that we do things. Those things are established. These people are hired to implement these particular systems. That’s what we’ll do and I’m sure that they will also bring some new ideas and new enthusiasm that will actually help and improve our systems.”

(On if Ronnie Brown can handle the workload at running back) – “He was the number one guy last year and I think he did pretty well. He didn’t do anything to make us think that he couldn’t do it.”

(On how much the 22-0 loss to the Browns played a part in the Dolphins winning their final six games of the year) – “I think it had an impact. I think sometimes you need these kinds of thunderbolts or things that happen – no disrespect to the Cleveland Browns. I think our team respected their team. I just think that we didn’t play very well in that particular game and I think it was a little bit of a gut check for our team in terms where we were going in the future. After that game we were 3-7 and I think everybody had to check the hole card a little bit and see what they were willing to do to try and get things turned around. My comments about, ‘it wasn’t all just about winning, but was about doing what we need to do to improve as a team, see who wants to do the things that we need to do to get this franchise where we need to be to have the kind of success in the future that we need to have. It would be interesting to observe everybody’s commitment to do that.’ That’s certainly what we did. I was very pleased that with 18 practices and six games left to go kind of how the attitude of the team changed and people bought into what we were trying to do a little bit more. As we had a little bit of success, the team chemistry certainly got better. If we didn’t lose that particular game, that may never have occurred. Our performance in that game contributed to somewhat of a turnaround in terms of how the players saw themselves and how they really wanted to see themselves in the future and what they were willing to do to get there.”

(On how long he thinks it will take for his team to be successful) – “We don’t have a timetable. We just try to be as successful, make good decisions on a day-to-day basis, technically about what we can do to improve our team, technically what we can do to complement the good players that we have on our team right now, and to continue to build good team chemistry and the kind of character and attitude that we need to play winning football. There is no, ‘we thought we were going to win this many games the first year, this year or the second year, then win the Super Bowl.’ I’m just saying that never as a head coach, whether it was at Toledo for one year (1990), Michigan State for five years (1995-99) or LSU for five years (2000-04) did we say, ‘we have a five-year plan.’ We have a plan to do everything that we can do on a day-to-day basis from a technical standpoint to make good choices and decisions about what we can do to continue to improve as a team. That’s what we’ll do. Making comparisons to other teams really don’t help you do that. It’s just continuing to know what you want to do, know how you want to do it and make the commitments and have the people in the organization committed to doing those things as effectively as possible so that you can have the best team success possible.”

(On the second-tier quarterbacks available in the draft) – “We haven’t specifically evaluated every one of those players, but obviously there are some very good quarterback prospects in this draft. I think that some of those guys have demonstrated an ability to really elevate the play of the people around them in terms of success that they’ve had in college. Leadership is certainly something that is important in a quarterback. I think some of the guys who you mentioned have shown an ability to do that. I think that’s important. [It’s] not just about physical ability in a quarterback, but leadership, decision-making, judgment, accuracy, timing and instincts are all probably more critical that that position maybe than any other position on the football field. As you get to know these guys a little bit better and you get to see and evaluate them a little bit more, I think you get a little better feel for that. I think with those particular guys, that’s what makes a difference.”

(On how to find leadership qualities in a player) – “I think you get it from a lot of different resources. First of all, when you talk to somebody you get a feel for it. When you talk to those that have been around them as coaches and players, you get a feel for it. I also think that when you see their body language as they play and affect other people you get a feel for it. I don’t think it’s any one particular thing. I think there are several things that probably contribute to making those kinds of judgments.”

(On whether he feels the need to change a quarterback’s sidearm throwing style) – “I thought it was an interesting statement when I was in Cleveland. When I was in Houston we always had to play against Bernie Kosar who kind of had a little different throwing motion. If you closed your eyes and didn’t watch the motion and watched where the ball went and how accurately it went, I think that was much more important than the motion itself. I think as long they’re efficient and effective in their consistency to be able to throw the ball with accuracy and it’s not affecting their arm strength relative to their potential ability in that particular area, I don’t know if you have to change a guy and make him classic. I was told as a golfer that ‘you’ll never get any better with that golf swing that you have.’ It was a little outside-in, cut-it, fading in there all the time, kind of Lee Trevino-style. The guy taught me how to play inside-out and hook it. I’ve never scored nearly as well as what I did with my old fade game that I learned on the side of the hill in West Virginia by watching somebody else do it. Now I can’t get back to it either, though. I’m kind of betwixed and just not very good.”

(On if not having a fifth or sixth-round pick will inhibit him from trading up in the draft) – “I don’t think the fifth and sixth-round picks have anything to do with that. All the picks have a certain value in the draft. There is actually a value board that you can look at to see wheat your particular picks are worth to give you a little bit of a value-judgment on ‘what do we have trade to move up or down? What is a good value?’ I think that’s probably based on most of the deals that have been made in the past. But your fifth- and sixth-round picks don’t have a whole lot of juice. We have three seventh-round picks. They don’t have a lot of juice, either. I think that unless you have multiple picks, you either gut your draft to move up if that’s what it’s going to take, or you say, ‘it’s not worth it based on some of the other issues that we have.’ And obviously you have to like the person that you’re willing to pay the premium to get by moving up in the draft. Those are all strategic judgments that need to get made once you evaluate all the players. As I’ve said to you guys before, you’re way ahead of me. You’ve already got the top ten guys who are coming off the board in the draft. We’re just starting with the college players. I haven’t even seen two of the three top quarterbacks throw the ball in person yet. I watched the national championship game like everyone else. Is that going to be our final judgment on that particular player? Probably not. We have a significant investment of time to try and learn about these things before we make those kinds of decisions.”

[Sunstroke]

Excellent transcript...Nick might be a relatively new NFL HC, but he's a crusty vet when it comes to filling a note pad without actually telling you anything you didn't already know. 

[Dolphin-UK]

But he says all the right things!!

Every time I read or hear a press conference of his I think "This guy is taking us to the superbowl sometime"