Saban Calls Dolphins "No-Win Situation" 20 Years Later

Former Miami Dolphins head coach Nick Saban called himself a name for leaving college football for that job

Nick Saban is introduced as the new Miami Dolphins head coach at the Dolphins practice facility in Davie, Florida, in early 2005. / Jason Parkhurst-Imagn Images

We are only a few weeks away from the 20th anniversary of the Miami Dolphins hiring Nick Saban as their head coach, but the college football legend sure sounds like he has regrets.

Appearing on the Pat McAfee Show on Friday, Saban revisited the circumstances of him being hired to coach the Dolphins, calling himself a "dumbass" for taking a job he called a "no-win situation."

Oh, and he did this unsolicited, asking to make the point after being asked about the Chicago Bears opening.

And there was a bit of revisionist history on his part.

"Having interviewed for a few NFL head coaching jobs in the past, OK, and I know you guys think that Chicago's a beautiful city and all that, but if you take a job when you don't have a roster ... you got to look at the roster," Saban said. "You gotta look at the salary cap. You gotta look at the quarterback situation, which the Bears have a good one. But I'm saying you have to take all those things into consideration, because if you don't, you can end up in a no-win situation like I took the Miami Dolphins job.

"We were $17 million over the cap, which was a lot back in those days. This is 20 years ago. We had the oldest team in the league. They're 4-12. Got no quarterback, and I'm thinking, I'm gonna make it right. Well, we had a winning season first year, but we couldn't get it turned around. But there were so many obstacles and no draft picks because they gave them all away for Ricky Williams. So if you don't do your research in taking an NFL job ... is my point regardless of how pretty the city."

NICK SABAN, THE DRAFT AND THE QUARTERBACK ISSUES

The Dolphins were wrapping up a 4-12 season under interim head coach Jim Bates when Saban was hired on Christmas Day 2004, and the quarterbacks on the roster were Jay Fiedler and A.J. Feeley, for whom the Dolphins had given the Philadelphia Eagles a 2005 second-round pick in a trade.

It was not because of the Ricky Williams trade that the Dolphins were short on draft picks in 2005 (those lost picks were in the 2002 and 2003 drafts), and they even recouped a second-round pick when they traded cornerback Patrick Surtain to the Kansas City Chiefs, jettisoning one of their best younger players.

And if Saban wants to bemoan the fact the Dolphins didn't have a quality quarterback on the roster, this is where we'll point out he used the second overall pick in that 2005 draft on running back Ronnie Brown instead of a quarterback who went 24th overall, guy by the name of Aaron Rodgers.

Instead, Saban settled on veteran Gus Frerotte, who while not elite did a very respectable job for the Dolphins in 2005 and helped the team rebound from a 3-7 start to finish at 9-7. The next offseason brought the Drew Brees fiasco, which led the Dolphins trading another second-round pick for a veteran QB, this time Daunte Culpepper. That move backfired, the Dolphins went 6-10 and Saban spent the month of December denying he was leaving to join the University of Alabama before doing just that.

In a parting shot to his former NFL team, Saban says he had an inkling he didn't have the necessary pieces in place to succeed in Miami.

"Yeah, I knew it," he said. "I just had a bad case of the dumb ass. ... Wayne Huizenga was a great owner, and I thought this was a really good organization, and I thought we could get it fixed, and we got it moving in the right direction, but not being able to overcome the quarterback thing was the issue."