Nick Saban dropped this 3-minute rant in response to a question about ball-control offense

Alabama head coach Nick Saban and his team started spring football on Tuesday, with new offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, who previously worked for the New England Patriots for over a decade. After the team’s first spring practice, Saban was asked a question about the Tide’s “new ball-control offense” it’s running. The reporter who asked the question mentioned Clemson’s advantage in time of possession during the National Championship Game in January. Saban, clearly not liking the question whatsoever, then went into a three-minute rant.

FootballScoop.com transcribed Saban’s full quotes. First, the head coach described Bama’s 35-31 loss to Clemson as more of a lack of execution, as well as his defense not being able to give his offense the ball back.

“There was nothing … we didn’t block them, we didn’t execute very well. We didn’t throw the ball accurately when we had open people and a couple of times we dropped it,” Saban said. “I think it was more a lack of execution than something schematically that we were doing as coaches. That’s not to blame anybody but us for not having players more well-prepared. The defense also needs to get themselves off the field on third down so that they don’t have to play as many plays, so it’s a combination of things.

I do think that we could have executed a lot better and I think that most players would probably tell you that on both sides of the ball, not to take anything away from Clemson but it is what it is. As we always do, we’re going to self-assess what we did through quality control — what we did well, what we need to try to improve on, visit people to try to get better at the things we need to do better.”

Saban continued on by pointing out that Daboll and the New England Patriots never ran ball-control offenses in the past, so there’d be no reason for Bama to start running that type of system.

“Philosophically, I don’t know where you came up with where we need to go to ball control. That’s not what we do. I mean, the New England Patriots threw the ball over 60 percent of the time, which is more than we threw it. So where does that assumption come from? Or do you do what everybody else in the media does — just create some shit, throw it on the wall and see what sticks, which is what I see happening everywhere. People who scream the loudest, they kind of get the attention.”

Saban then continued on this last point, and went on to discuss the NCAA and high school camps.

“And we pass some rule that everybody has to live with, or some law, where the consequences mess up a lot of other things. We do it all the time. We’re doing it right now. The NCAA is doing it. We’re going to change the way we have summer camps, we can’t have high school coaches working summer camps, I mean, it’s the most ridiculous thing that I’ve ever seen. It is what it is and whatever they do, they do.

So we say we don’t want third-parties dealing with players so we’re not going to let the high school coach bring a guy to camp but some third-party guy can bring him to camp now. Makes no sense at all. But all the people who have common sense, they don’t say anything about it. But the people who scream the loudest will get the thing changed and it’ll mess everything up. That’s the way it goes. The way it goes in the world, politics, just the way it goes. Same way with you — we’re going to be more conservative now, ball-control offense. Where did that come from? I never said that, nobody in this building ever said that, so where’d you come up with that? Just had a dream about it, or what? If we had caught some passes in the national championship game, we had some guys open, we wouldn’t have had to control the ball. We would have scored more touchdowns.”

Saban’s quote about the media creating narratives and throwing them against the wall prompted an Auburn beat writer to bring up Bama putting fake news up as bulletin-board material before the semifinal game against Washington.

While it’s true that Clemson held the ball for 34 minutes compared to Bama’s 25 during the national title game, Saban, or the New England Patriots for that matter, hasn’t been known for executing a ball-control offense, and there’d be no reason for the Tide to start doing so.

This isn’t the first time Saban has been heated with a question from the media at a press conference. In 2015, he explained how he doesn’t take FCS opponents lightly, given a 2011 game against Georgia Southern, who “ran through their ass like shit through a tin horn.”

Surely, this isn’t the last question from the media that will set Saban off like this. I think it’s safe to say we’ve seen the last of questions about his “ball-control offense,” though.