The Play That Changed Nick Saban

Alabama comes into the 2019 season riding a streak of five straight seasons with at least 12 wins. The last time the Tide failed to hit that mark was 2013, when they lost their No. 1 ranking and perfect record in their regular-season finale, a 34-28 loss to Auburn. The game is remembered as the Kick Six Game for the missed field-goal attempt that was returned for a game-winning touchdown. But as Bleacher Report contributor Lars Anderson writes in his new book, the game-tying play earlier in the fourth quarter of that loss might have had an even bigger long-term impact than the Kick Six on Alabama coach Nick Saban, evolving the way he runs both his offense and defense.

The following is an excerpt from CHASING THE BEAR: How Bear Bryant and Nick Saban Made Alabama the Greatest College Football Program of All Time by Lars Anderson. Copyright © 2019 by the author and reprinted with permission from Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.     

Courtesy of Grand Central Publishing

The ball was snapped and Alabama kicker Adam Griffith gave it a boot. The kick sailed toward the goalposts and faded slightly to the right. The try came up short and the ball fell into Auburn returner Chris Davis's arms. He ran three steps forward and then made a slight cut to the right. The move signaled to the rest of the Auburn special teamers that the return would actually go left, as it would on a punt return. In a heartbeat every Tiger blocker sprinted to the left sideline to form a wall, and the Alabama players—most of whom had watched the kick fall short rather than run toward the ball—were slow to react.

Davis blazed down the sideline, untouched, and then collapsed in the end zone, winning the game for Auburn, 34-28, on the play that became known as the Kick Six. The Tiger student section bull-rushed a fence, pushed past security, trampled a flowerbed, and charged onto the field, some jumping on the dog pile atop Davis, who couldn't breathe under the mass of sweat-soaked humanity. "It looked like Bourbon Street out there," said Auburn special teams coach Scott Fountain.

Dozens of students cannonballed into the prickly-leafed holly bushes that ringed the stadium. Others used pocket knives and keys to carve up slices of the field for keepsakes. More than one thousand fans broke off twigs from the holly bushes. And at the 37-yard line on the Auburn side of the field after the final play a fan dumped the ashes of a loved one, which the stadium maintenance crew found the following day.

Saban emerged from the chaos on the field and was still irate over that RPO that tied the score at 28-28. He made a decision then and there: His offense needed to change to keep up with the times. "The RPO pass that Nick Marshall hit before the Kick Six changed everything for Alabama," said Gary Danielson, the color analyst for CBS who called the game. "Nick said, 'OK, if this is how things are going to be called, we're going to have to change, too. If that's going to be the rule and they're not going to call the linemen downfield for blocking, I'm going to do it, too.' That is when the philosophical switch occurred. And that led to the hiring of Lane Kiffin and the opening up of the Alabama offense."

"After that play, Coach Saban basically said, 'I can't defend that,'" said Barrett Jones, a former Alabama offensive lineman who is now an ESPN college football analyst. "When the offensive linemen show run for three or four seconds and the quarterback gets to the edge, it forces the defensive back to run up at the quarterback or stay with the wide receiver. Saban just said, 'I've got to a run a style of offense like that.'"

The play also changed Alabama's defensive philosophy. When Alabama won the national championship in 2011, the defense was on the field for about eight hundred plays—and faced only five run-pass option plays. But by the end of 2013, the RPO had become a common offensive play. How did Saban and the Tide respond? They changed the type of defender they wanted.

"Go back to the Alabama defense of 2009 and the average weight of the front seven was about 270 pounds," said Phil Savage, the former general manager of the Cleveland Browns and the Alabama radio color analyst from 2009 to 2018. "Coach Saban knew that he had to get lighter up front because of the spread offense and the RPOs. In 2009, for instance, they had Terrence Cody as a defensive tackle and he weighed about 365 pounds. Well, a guy like Cody isn't even on the recruiting radar by the end of 2013 because they need more speed up front to chase down those running quarterbacks. Saban is always adjusting and adapting. He got that from Bill Belichick, who won his first Super Bowl with Tom Brady in an I-formation offense and then he started winning Super Bowls with a spread offense. Saban is the same way. He won his first national title in 2009 with a big defense and a running game. By the end of 2013 he realized he needed to change both his offense and his defense."

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Lane Kiffin and Nick Saban knew one another. At age thirty-one in 2007, Kiffin—the son of longtime NFL coach Monte Kiffin— became the head coach of the Oakland Raiders, making him the youngest NFL head coach in the modern era, which dates to 1946. He lasted less than two years, fired after compiling a 5-15 record. He then moved to the University of Tennessee, but left after a single season to become the head coach at USC. After a 62-41 loss to Arizona State, he was fired in September of 2013. Athletic director Pat Haden delivered the news as he pulled Kiffin off the team bus on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport.

Kiffin had sought Saban's counsel when he was USC's head coach. Before the start of the '13 season, Kiffin flew to Tuscaloosa and had a list of thirty-two questions for Saban, ranging from how to organize practices to how to discipline players. Saban patiently answered every question posed to him by Kiffin who, like Saban, was represented by agent Jimmy Sexton. Though the two coaches were separated by twenty-four years and had little in common off the field, they admired each other's football acumen.

Days after losing in the 2013 Iron Bowl, Saban invited Kiffin back to Tuscaloosa to observe practice as the Tide prepared to face Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl. For eight days, Kiffin evaluated the Alabama offense. After his first day at practice, he ate dinner at Saban's house and they spent three hours discussing what he had seen. Then, after every practice, the two would huddle for about fifteen minutes to compare notes and ideas. Saban never announced to the other staffers why Kiffin was there, but the message was clear: Saban wasn't happy with his offense. In one meeting with the staff, Kiffin leveled a frank assessment of Alabama's offense: It was too predictable on third downs.

To read more, visit grandcentralpublishing.com to purchase CHASING THE BEAR.