Nick Saban was a brilliant college coach, but the NFL was a football puzzle he couldn't solve

Nick Saban dominated the college football world. Few were in his class. Few won the way he did, inspired fear the way he did, created a dynasty that might never be matched. Give the man his flowers. He earned them.

But go back in time for a moment. Decades ago. There was a different Saban. And while it seems impossible to believe there was ever part of a football puzzle Saban could not solve, there was one. You may have heard of it. That puzzle was the NFL.

The NFL destroys people. Even the best. It eats them alive and it did with Saban. He was liked by some players, for sure, but despised by others. They hated his coaching style. They thought he was cold and heartless. Once, quarterback Daunte Culpepper, who was 6-4 and 250 pounds, wanted to fight him. The only thing that saved Saban was a security guard stepping in to intervene.

Fox Sports NFL insider Jay Glazer once reported that when Saban was coaching the Dolphins, he questioned the toughness of linebacker Zach Thomas. Thomas was known, specifically, for his toughness. This did not sit well with the linebacker. "And then I think his final straw is that he questioned Zach Thomas' toughness," Glazer said in 2021, "and Zach almost kicked his butt. That just doesn't work on this level."

He once screamed at a Dolphins player so hard he made the player cry.

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One of the bottom lines about Saban's NFL tenure is that he couldn't tolerate not having the absolute control over players and his team. He left for college because he had that control there.

There have been a number of coaches who couldn't make it in the NFL as a head coach so Saban is far from alone. What happened to Saban after he departed the NFL is a credit to him. He adapted and grew and became the best. What happened to Saban while he was in the NFL is a testament to how hard it is to succeed in that league and how it can befuddle the best of the best.

There were actually two versions of Saban in the NFL. Saban the assistant coach was one version. When Saban was defensive coordinator of the Cleveland Browns in the early 1990s, his units were consistently one of the better ones in the game. He coached under the man who would eventually become a close friend: Bill Belichick. Like Belichick, he was hard on his players, but in Cleveland, it worked. In 1994 that defensive unit was one of the best in the NFL.

"I learned so much from him coaching in Cleveland," Belichick told ESPN.

In those days, Saban would earn the reputation as being extremely tough on his players. This would become one of the larger issues Saban faced as an NFL coach. NFL players didn't always respond to that coaching style. This would be a theme when he left LSU to become coach of the Miami Dolphins.

He spent two years with the team beginning in 2005 going 15-17. You saw sparks of the brilliant Saban but the biggest story in Miami was his relationship with the players. It was, well, rocky at best. There was even one Miami player who alleged that Saban showed an extreme lack of care for a player who had collapsed after a brutal practice.

But not all Dolphins players hated Saban.

"We had a great relationship," Jason Taylor said in 2017, "and I think I might be the only person in Miami that really does like Nick Saban, so I have to keep it down a little bit talking about him here. But I respected him. Defensively, I think football philosophy, I learned so much from him. He really kind of broadened my horizons as far as the way I looked at the game of football and defense in particular – schematically with coverages and mixing coverages with pressures up front – and kind of gave us a lot of leeway in building game plans and the ability to put together third-down packages. So I think it helped me grow as a player and as a pro as well.

"He was tough to work with. He was tough on some guys. We were disciplined, we worked hard, but I enjoyed playing for him."

Saban would leave Miami after stating with great certainty he wasn't.

"I guess I have to say it," he said. "I'm not going to be the Alabama coach."

Oh, he did become the Alabama coach. A great one. But only after the NFL chased him away.