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It seems pretty safe to say that Alabama Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban and New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick are the best coaches at their respective levels.
Saban is the best coach in collegiate football, and Belichick is the best coach in the NFL.
The two also have a history, as Saban was an assistant of Belichick's with the Cleveland Browns from 1991 through 1994.
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So, as you would imagine, Saban and Belichick have a relationship, and Saban says he still uses the advice that Belichick gave him to this day. That advice? Don't coach too much:
“Good coaches are trying to reinforce players in practice after every play. They’re telling them, ‘You did this well’ or ‘You need to do it this way’ or ‘You made a mental error’ You’re getting corrected, you did a do job, whatever,” Saban said, according to BamaInsider.com. “Sometimes player are depending on that reinforcement all the time in practice. But in a game, there’s no coach out there. I used to coach like that when I was an assistant. We’d have a scrimmage with the Cleveland Browns and Belichick would chew my butt out, man. He’d say, ‘Let the players play.’ I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve never had my butt chewed out before for coaching, teaching.’ But I have to say the same thing sometimes to our coaches now. Because there’s a time when you’ve just got to let the players play. Because in a game, they’ve got to know what to do, they’ve got to know how to do it. They can’t depend on somebody else to make a call for them, they can’t depend on somebody else to recognize things for them. So we actually do stuff in practice now, we do team on the field, I make the coaches get off the field. Let the players play.”
Obviously, Belichick's advice worked, as Saban has turned the Alabama Crimson Tide into the most dominant force in NCAA football, much like Belichick has developed a perennial dynasty with the New England Patriots.
