Nick Saban and Bill Belichick are the best football coaches of all time, but who is the best?
Alabama head coach Nick Saban and New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick are the architects of two of football’s latest dynasties. After defeating Ohio State, Saban captured his illustrious seventh national title. Meanwhile, his friend and former boss with the Cleveland Browns, Belichick, has won six Super Bowls with the Patriots.
That begs the question; Who’s got the greater dynasty? Who’s success is better than the other? Each side can make a very compelling case. Furthermore, both coaches are largely responsible for shifting the culture that had been lacking in each area before they arrived.
Nick Saban or Bill Belichick: Who has the better career?
To make a case for Saban, look at what the Crimson Tide were before he arrived. Prior to his arrival, they were a middling program that hadn’t won a national since 1992. Alabama was cycling through coaches, wasn’t producing NFL talent at a high level and weren’t getting the nation’s top recruits to come to Tuscaloosa.
Now, they’re doing all of that on an annual basis. Saban annually had the top recruiting classes, most players drafted in the NFL and won six titles since arriving in Tuscaloosa.
Saban has an advantage over Belichick in that he can easily pick his players and load up on five-star recruits while Belichick has to add to the roster with an NFL Draft that saw him draft at the bottom of rounds for consistently winning. Plus, he has a salary cap to manage.
Drafting Tom Brady in the sixth round was the catalyst to the Patriots dynasty but several of Belichick’s moves as general manager didn’t have the same level of success as Saban’s eye for talent.
Is it harder to win in the NFL than college? In the NFL, more teams make the playoffs and you can afford to lose more than one game and still compete for a championship.
In college football, there wasn’t a playoff format until recently and losing twice eliminates a team from championship contention.
Okay, it’s hard to win in both leagues, and no one has been able to win at a clip like Saban and Belichick.
The ultimate decider may be that Saban is a Belichick disciple, but the student has shown he can win with a constant turnover of players while Belichick has yet to prove he can win without Brady.
That means Saban has produced the greater dynasty.
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