Nick Saban says he liked working with Lane Kiffin while heaping praise on the Ole Miss head coach
Alabama head coach Nick Saban didn't hesitate to heap praise on Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin this week before the Crimson Tide's matchup against the Rebels on Saturday. Kiffin served as Saban's offensive coordinator at Alabama from 2014 to 2016. The partnership was fruitful — Bama lost only four games during those three seasons […]
Alabama head coach Nick Saban didn't hesitate to heap praise on Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin this week before the Crimson Tide's matchup against the Rebels on Saturday.
Kiffin served as Saban's offensive coordinator at Alabama from 2014 to 2016.
The partnership was fruitful — Bama lost only four games during those three seasons (and they won a national championship in 2015).
It was also entertaining as we often saw Saban yelling at Kiffin on the sidelines during games.
Despite those outbursts, Saban said this week on "Hey Coach with Nick Saban" that he liked working with Kiffin. He also described Kiffin as a great play caller.
"I liked working with Lane," said Saban. "Lane is a great play caller and really [a] great imagination. Really good on game day in terms of [he] could see what the other team's doing and how they were playing plays and immediately knew how to take advantage of it. Great play caller."
"He did a really good job for us," added Saban. "And he's done a really good job there (at Ole Miss). They've won a lot of games. And their teams play really, really well. I think he always does a really good job of utilizing the personnel he has, putting them in the right place."
"One of their tight ends got hurt so they played four wideouts in one game and did all the same stuff with the wideouts that they did with the tight end. Very innovative when it comes to how to utilize players but not make it so difficult on the other players on the team when he makes changes."
There's no denying that Kiffin is one of the great play callers of this generation.
But I have a feeling Kiffin will view these comments from Saban as "rat poison" with the two teams set to face off in Oxford on Saturday.
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