Alabama football coach Nick Saban seems to believe that college football's latest evolution might be a return to the way the game used to be played. While spread offenses and high-scoring games became the norm, Georgia has won consecutive national championships led by a dominant defense. Given the Alabama football program's success under Nick Saban before the sport's offensive explosion, the Crimson Tide are well equipped to thrive amid the latest changes.

“I think it actually has started to swing back a little bit,” Saban told Sports Illustrated. “You look at some of the more successful teams, they have gotten back to not being in spread all the time, more tight ends involved in the offense, more balance in the run game and play-action passes—not just spread RPOs and drop-back passes. I think that there has been a little bit of a shift because the defense sort of shifts to adapt to what the offense is doing so even in the type of personnel that you have.

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“When you play [against the] spread you have to have more athletic linebackers; they’re not as big sometimes, guys that can take on people up front, so now you go back to running the ball when you’re playing with those guys and you create a little advantage for yourself. Football is always going to evolve—when people adapt to one thing, they’re either gonna invent something else, or revert back to something that happened in the past that we now take advantage of how you’ve adapted to stop something new.”

The Alabama football team is looking for its first national championship since 2020. Saban has won six titles with the Crimson in the last 14 years.