Alabama Football: Nick Saban has built an NFL Draft Factory

Recovery from a hip replacement may keep Nick Saban from celebrating in-person with former Alabama football players chosen this week’s NFL Draft.

Nick Saban and Alabama football have built an NFL Draft factory in Tuscaloosa. Even with Saban not in Nashville this week, his impact will be felt and acknowledged by his former players.

The work behind Saban’s Draft achievements belies a notion Crimson Tide Draft success simply follows season after season of top recruiting classes. The idea 5-Star and top 4-Star recruits frequently achieve NFL Draft success is far from accurate. Based on the 247Sports Composite, of the top 50 players in the 2014 recruiting class,16 of those highly rated recruits were not drafted by any NFL team.

Six of the 2014 class will be eligible for this week’s Draft. Ten became first-round selections.  Among the remaining 18, 2014 top recruits, eight became second-round picks, three were chosen in the third round, two in the fourth round, one in the fifth and four in the seventh round.

Of the so-far, Draft eligible, 2014, Top 50 recruits, more than 36 percent were not drafted. An even more glaring Draft example comes from the 2015 recruit class. The No. 1 overall recruit in the 2015 class was Trenton Thompson. After three seasons at Georgia, Thompson was not drafted. This spring Thompson played for Arizona in the Alliance of American Football. He is still looking for an NFL chance.

For the record, Alabama football and Nick Saban cannot guarantee Draft success for top 50 recruits. Hootie Jones was No. 50 in that 2014 class and was not drafted. Tony Brown was the No. 9 player and was not drafted.

In the 2014 signing class Top 50, Alabama football did have four former players drafted by the NFL. Marlon Humphrey and Rashaan Evans were first-round selections. Da’Shawn Hand in the fourth round and Bo Scarbrough, in the seventh, were also drafted. Another member of the 2014 Top 50 group, Christian Miller will be drafted this week.

The Extraordinary NFL Draft Success of Nick Saban

Going into the 2019 NFL Draft, 77 Alabama football players have been drafted in the Saban era. That number is over a ten season span since Alabama football had no players drafted in 2008.

Saban had Draft success at LSU and Michigan State as well, but not close to what has been achieved with the Alabama football program. In his ten head coaching seasons at Michigan State and LSU, Saban had 39 players drafted.

The Crimson Tide will probably not set any new, team Draft records this year. The total number of players drafted record was set last year, with 12 former Tide players selected. The team record for first round picks in a single year is four. That milestone has been reached three times, 2012, 2017 and 2018.

A most telling pair of numbers for comparison is before-Saban and after-Saban, Alabama football, first-round, NFL Draft selections. Riley Smith was the Tide’s first ever player drafted by the NFL. Smith was chosen No. 2 in the first round, going immediately after Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger. Since 1936 was the first NFL Draft, Smith was the second player drafted in the history of the league.

From 1936-2000, through 65 seasons of college football, the Alabama Crimson Tide had 30 NFL first-round picks. In 11 seasons of Nick Saban coached, Tide football, there have been 26 first-round picks. There will be more this week. Truly an extraordinary achievement for the greatest college football coach of this era, maybe of any era.

Check in with Bama Hammer often during Draft week. We will track all the news coming out of Nashville.