I'm a big believer in your offensive limitations come from your quarterback.
I've seen Coach Saban over the years have to make a lot of tough decisions, and there's not one decision he doesn't make that he doesn't bounce ideas off the staff. To me, that's invaluable.
If you chart SEC champions over a 20-year period, the one consistent thing to me is you're not going to win if you don't have a quarterback. It's too critical of a position. He decides something every play.
Coach Saban's a great coach; he does it his way, and I have to do it my way. I have to cut my own cloth.
I moved seven times the first seven years I coached.
I've been very fortunate to be with Coach Saban this long, learned a lot of football from him. It's been kind of the key to my personal success out of the places that I've coached.
You've got to be diversified enough. That's the truth in the SEC and in college football.
It's hard to say that it gets any better to be at your alma mater and run a major college football program.
I could finish my career being a defensive coordinator and say, 'Hey, he's Mickey Andrews.'
The amount of pressure that I've put on myself as a defensive coordinator for the last 10, 11 years, I really believe there's a lot more decisions that go into that position than the head coach.
I've got recruits that will text and call and do everything in the middle of the night. And I'm thinking, 'I'm with my family.' But you've got to dedicate time to that, or you can't do it.
I think it's what's best for that kid. Are you going to teach that kid a lesson for 10 years down the road by suspending him a game?
A team is a group of young men playing together. The program is the entirety of that.
Every day I pull into that parking spot that says 'Head Football Coach,' I get out of my car and pinch myself sometimes, just to make sure it's real, sort of like, 'Is this really happening?'
The only thing that matters with my kids are them graduating and playing well, and I try to do my dangedest to get them to play well.
There's a lot of people who think in order to be a good head coach, you've got to be a head coach at a smaller school.
I always felt like, one of the niches is if you can recruit the SEC, you can be a head coach in the SEC.
I might not have a conference championship or a national championship as a head coach, but I had the recruiting factor.
To me, personally, my development to become a head coach will be much better working for Coach Saban than necessarily going somewhere else because you learn every day that you're in there.
I think the growth you get from working at a place like Alabama and with a program under Nick Saban, it helps me immensely.
