Nick Saban and elite defensive players at the NFL Draft were a marriage made for professional football heaven for many years, as the former Alabama and LSU head coach turned out top-notch SEC talent on that side of the ball that was gobbled up at the next level.
Now, Saban has a different viewpoint, as an ESPN football analyst. On Thursday night, during a special edition of College GameDay at the NFL Draft in Pittsburgh, Saban laid out his best available draft prospects on the defensive side of the ball.
If anyone would know which elite defensive players from the college ranks fit best at the NFL level, it’s Saban, so when he was asked by ESPN host Rece Davis to give his All-Defense draft team, Saban was ready and willing to lay out his elite defensive brigade at the Steel City draft celebration.
“I think the strength of this draft is probably the edge guys and the defensive secondary,” said Nick Saban, before he went into more depth on which players he was exactly talking about.
Sure enough, some of the elite defensive players Saban had on his All-Defense draft team were scooped up right away in the first round on Thursday night, including Texas Tech edge rusher David Bailey, who went No. 2 overall to the New York Jets, and Ohio State safety Caleb Downs, who Saban recruited and coached at Alabama, who was selected 11th overall by the Dallas Cowboys.
Bailey and Downs were among a plethora of Saban’s All-Defense unit that was already being taken in primetime on Day 1 in Pittsburgh, because Saban coached a ton of draft-level defensive talent and now he’s paid to break down which of those defensive guys he believes are the best.
Not even halfway through Round 1, some of Saban’s chosen ones had already found their new NFL homes.
Here is Saban’s full All-Defense roster that he revealed on Thursday night before the draft started:
Saban coached a ton of SEC talent that was grabbed early in past NFL Drafts, and here is some of that potential top-notch SEC talent that could go in the first round on Thursday night. Here is what the Kalshi market is saying about which SEC players have the best shot to be selected early:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
