{"id":202194,"date":"2025-10-04T20:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T20:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/202194\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T20:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T20:45:07","slug":"bill-belichick-nick-saban-exchange-praise-after-sabans-friday-comments-about-mac-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/202194\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Belichick, Nick Saban exchange praise, after Saban’s Friday comments about Mac Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

The football world was quietly buzzing on Friday, after former Alabama coach Nick Saban publicly commented<\/a> on long-time friend Bill Belichick\u2019s handling of quarterback Mac Jones in New England. By Saturday, everything seemed to be fine between Belichick and Saban.<\/p>\n

Belichick appeared on ESPN\u2019s College GameDay from the field in Chapel Hill, where his 2-2 Tar Heels will face 1-3 Clemson at noon ET. And Belichick heaped praise on Saban, who was Belichick\u2019s defensive coordinator in Cleveland from 1991 through 1994.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned an awful lot from Coach Saban<\/a>,\u201d Belichick said. \u201cYou know, we came from different defensive systems, and we merged them together in Cleveland, and, you know, I learned a lot from him about man-to-man coverage, which we didn\u2019t play a lot of at New York, and you know, the 4-3 defense, which, you know, he played at Michigan State and Toledo. So, you know, it was a great experience, you know, watching Nick handle the free agents and recruit and build a program in Alabama. You know, I\u2019m very grateful for the relationship that I have with him and all the things that I\u2019ve learned from him. He\u2019s, you know, he\u2019s the best that\u2019s ever done it, and like I said, it is a real honor for me to just be with him for, you know, those four years and have our relationship and friendship that it\u2019d be almost, you know, lifelong in this career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Replied Saban: \u201cI never thought, in all the time we\u2019ve been friends, that I\u2019d ever say that you\u2019re full of shit, but I learned a lot more from you than you ever learned from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Privately, it would be interesting to know whether Belichick thinks Saban is full of shit for what he said on Friday about his former Alabama quarterback, who engineered an impressive upset on Thursday night while fighting through a variety of injuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so happy for Mac,\u201d Saban said on Pat McAfee\u2019s show. \u201cI think Mac was one of those guys who was in bad situations in New England relative to coaching and all that stuff, and who was the offensive coordinator, and how did he get developed when he came into the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was a direct shot at Belichick. After offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels was hired to coach the Raiders in early 2022, Belichick put Matt Patricia, a lifelong defensive coach, in charge of the offense. And Joe Judge, a special-teams coach, was coaching the quarterbacks.<\/p>\n

It created a major issue between Jones and Belichick. Jones, a Pro Bowler in 2021 under McDaniels, wasn\u2019t happy with the manner in which his development was affected. And he wasn\u2019t bashful about making that known. Which pissed off Belichick.<\/p>\n

By the 2023 season, Belichick rarely if ever even spoke to Jones, per multiple sources. And Saban made a general but pointed reference to the entire situation on Friday.<\/p>\n

Maybe Belichick hasn\u2019t heard about it. Maybe he\u2019s playing nice. Or maybe Beichick doesn\u2019t want to start a fight he can\u2019t win.<\/p>\n

Currently, Belichick needs all the friends in the media he can get. His football team isn\u2019t nearly good enough. He\u2019ll require key figures in an industry for which he has had constant disdain (except when collecting checks in 2024) to keep him from the same ending with UNC that he endured in New England.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The football world was quietly buzzing on Friday, after former Alabama coach Nick Saban publicly commented on long-time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202195,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-202194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202194\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}