re: Comparing Saban and Kirby's first 7 years. From Twitter....

From the outside looking in , I think both coaches will tell you that really good assistant coaches are hard to come by. Saban made who he is today, being an assistant at smaller schools. Look at Sabans early years , he had Mel Tucker, Mario Christobal, and Kirby Smart, Sal Sunseri as assistants . That’s a pretty stellar line up that were aggressive recruiters. You can’t fault Saban imo for trying to adapt to the spread, but I dont think it worked out and I hope from the defensive side of things they go back to murder ball.

The appearance of drop offs in the program imo were the combination of this and the three years where Saban had to completely replace multiple staff members, one year it seemed almost every damn position. I remember an interview with Saban regarding Kirby leaving to go to UGA , and he said “ Kirby had ceratainly been one of the most loyal assistants” he had ever had. That shite matters ….