The best untold stories of Nick Saban from Kirby Smart, Lane Kiffin and more former assistants
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Chris Low
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Chris Low
ESPN Senior Writer
- College football reporter
- Joined ESPN.com in 2007
- Graduate of the University of Tennessee
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Harry Lyles Jr.
THEY HAD A front-row seat for coaching greatness.
The coaches who came and went under Nick Saban, many of whom are now running their own programs, are like everybody else in the college football world. They’re still processing Saban’s retirement and have been since he announced Jan. 10 that he was walking away from coaching after winning seven national championships, six at Alabama and one at LSU.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart joked that he would like to fly all the coaches who worked under Saban to his new home in Jupiter Island, Florida, bring in a film crew and simply sit around and tell stories about Saban’s legendary career.
This is ESPN’s attempt to do just that, as we talked to 11 members of the Saban coaching tree, viewing the legendary leader through the eyes of the people who know him best.
Saban’s protégés, including Mark Dantonio from their Michigan State days, Jimbo Fisher from their time at LSU and Smart, Mario Cristobal, Lane Kiffin, Dan Lanning, Steve Sarkisian, Mike Locksley and more from Saban’s 17-year run at Alabama, share their most memorable, funny and moving moments and break down what made him one of the greatest coaches of all time.
From Saban’s decision to replace Jalen Hurts with Tua Tagovailoa at halftime of the 2017 national championship game to helping Sarkisian pick up the pieces of his life. We learn what Kiffin did to provoke an epic “ass-chewing,” about Smart’s awkward first interview and Fisher’s shared “West Virginia hillbilly” ties with his former boss/nemesis. We get insight into Saban’s softer side and some blow-by-blow accounts of Saban’s pickup basketball games.
One spoiler on those hoops games: Very rarely was Saban fouled.
‘It’s like dog years working for me?!’: Untold Saban stories
Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin has joked over the years that he received his share of “ass-chewings” from Saban during his time at Alabama. But nothing rises to the level of the one he endured during the 2016 fall camp.
The team was in a “good-on-good” drill, pitting the starting offensive players vs. the starters on defense, and even though Kiffin had been warned by other coaches not to go overboard and try to make Saban’s defense look bad, Kiffin couldn’t resist. He was hired in 2014 as Saban’s offensive coordinator with the specific goal of helping modernize Alabama’s offense.
“I’d come from the Pete Carroll camp. I wasn’t wired that way, to let the defense win,” said Kiffin, who spent three turbulent but successful seasons as Saban’s offensive coordinator.
Kiffin had several coaches on his offensive staff present different types of plays, or what one of those assistants recently referred to as “cool plays,” and put them in before practice. Everybody in the offensive staff room knew Saban wouldn’t be pleased.
“We had a really good day on offense, ran some reverses, threw a double pass and had all these touchdowns, and he said that all I was trying to do was win the drill and trick the defense and not help the team,” Kiffin said. “I was like, ‘Isn’t that the point in good-on-good situations on offense, to see if you can move the ball?’
“He was furious.”
His ears ringing from the chewing-out the day before, Kiffin changed it up the next practice.
“Stubborn old Lane, I ran the most generic, basic, under-center offense I could, sort of their old-school offense they ran under Joe Pendry,” Kiffin said. “And the defense killed us. We’d be third-and-8, and I’d have the quarterback under center.”
In the staff meeting afterward, Saban was again miffed and wanted an explanation from Kiffin on why he was going under center on third-and-long and running the ball.
“‘I’m just running what I thought you would want me to run against the defense,'” Kiffin answered. “Again, it was just me being smart-ass me.”
At that point, Saban cleared everybody out of the room except Kiffin, who knew what was coming.
“I have to sit there, and he is screaming at me, standing over me screaming as I’m sitting in my chair. I thought he was going to fight me physically,” said Kiffin, who can laugh about it now. “So, yes, I got a lot of ass-chewings, but that’s the biggest one and one that no one saw. But I deserved it.”
Saban, however, had one last salvo, which Kiffin and the offensive coaches from that staff still find hilarious. Saban compared Kiffin to a children’s book character, P.J. Funnybunny, a spoiled bunny who went around creating havoc.
“He screamed at me that I was the bunny,” Kiffin said, “and we were like, ‘What the hell is that? There’s no way Coach has read a little kid’s bedtime story like that!'”
SMART WILL NEVER forget his first interview with Saban in 2004 when Smart was up for a job at LSU as defensive backs coach. Smart was a graduate assistant at Florida State at the time, and his old pal Will Muschamp, then Saban’s defensive coordinator at LSU, had vouched for him.
“I go on the interview, and I’m young and unassuming, and there are all these stories out there that if Miss Terry [Saban’s wife] invites you to the house for dinner, she had to give you the OK. And if you didn’t get the OK, then you weren’t going to get the job.”
Lance Thompson was leaving LSU to take the UCF defensive coordinator’s job. Smart remembers Thompson, who worked under Saban two different times, telling Smart in passing: “Working for Nick is like dog years. Every year feels like seven.”
Smart visited the Saban home on Super Bowl Sunday, and they were all sitting around and talking after dinner.
“I was comfortable and feeling good about the way it was going, and I just say, ‘I don’t get it. People say working here is like dog years.’ I don’t know why in the hell I said that. Just dumb,” Smart said. “Think about it. Why would you ever say something like that to an employer you’re trying to get a job with? But I did. I guess I wasn’t overwhelmed or intimidated. I was too young to know any better.”
The next morning, Smart got a call from Muschamp after that day’s LSU staff meeting. Muschamp told Smart that an irate Saban barked to everybody in the staff room: “Which one of you dumbasses said it’s like dog years working for me? We’re trying to hire the guy, and you tell him that?”
Smart is still sheepish about it all these years later.
“I got the whole staff cussed out and somehow still got the job.”
MIAMI COACH MARIO Cristobal was Saban’s offensive line coach for four seasons at Alabama before moving to Oregon as co-offensive coordinator and later head coach. A second-generation Cuban American who grew up in Miami, Cristobal said driving to see recruits with Saban was always an adventure, especially with Saban being a renowned back-seat driver, something to which every coach who ever went out on the road with him will attest.
One time, Saban and Cristobal were driving to see a recruit in Iowa, and it was snowing heavily.
“I didn’t know how to drive in the snow, and we were almost crashing,” Cristobal said.
Saban looked at Cristobal and asked quizzically, “Tell me, man, there ain’t no snow in Cuba. Why the hell are you driving?”
OREGON COACH DAN Lanning got a taste of what working for Saban was like on one of his first days on the job as a graduate assistant at Alabama — and at Saban’s youth football camp, no less.
“I’m part of the group that’s running the bag drills. It’s not something unique, but Nick had a way that he wanted to run those drills. And it’s one of the first times I remember getting my butt chewed,” Lanning said. “The strength coach was running the drill and then he had to leave and go run the drill for our actual guys. So I had it, but I wasn’t doing a good job of paying attention to how Nick wanted the drill run.
“I learned quickly that I was running the drill wrong — and I’m talking about sixth- and seventh-graders. It wasn’t like these are the guys we’re about to coach. And it was just a great reminder to me: Pay attention to details. For me to get my best butt-chewing during kids camp, I think that just shows the intensity of Nick.”
WHEN SABAN CONTRACTED COVID-19 during the 2020 national championship season, he had to quarantine at home. But that didn’t mean he missed practice. He was there — just not physically.
Saban had Alabama officials set up cameras so he could watch practice from home via Zoom.
“We know he’s watching practice from home, and after practice, we bring it up [in the middle of the field] like we would if he was there. It was just routine,” said Marshall coach Charles Huff, who was Alabama’s running backs coach at the time.
As the team gathered, Saban’s football chief operating officer, Ellis Ponder, rolled a 19-inch television set on a stand onto the field in the indoor practice facility. Saban addressed the team on video just as he would have if he had been there in the flesh.
“And at the end, he holds up his hand and goes, ‘One, two, three,’ and everybody yells, ‘Team,'” Huff said. “It was like ‘Saw,’ the movie where the little TV rolls in, and boom, that doll pops up and gives you instructions.”
THERE WAS NO basking in championships under Saban, even after winning it all.
Georgia Tech coach Brent Key remembers traveling back home after winning the 2017 national championship, which was Saban’s fifth at Alabama. The game was on a Monday night, and the team returned to campus the next day. On Wednesday morning, there was a staff meeting, and there was very little reflection from Saban.
“He comes in, sits down and is like, ‘Guys, congratulations on a good season. We overcame a lot of adversity. We had injuries. We had guys prepared to come back,'” Key recalled.
But everybody in the room knew a “but” was coming, and with colorful language.
“But that was last year. We’re behind in recruiting. We shouldn’t have been behind in that game,” Saban said, his voice rising.
Saban had already moved on to the next challenge.
Key remembers looking over at current Maryland coach Mike Locksley, who was in his second season at Alabama as receivers coach.
“Locks goes, ‘Damn, that was yesterday! I just won my first national championship. Like, that just happened yesterday. I’m still hungover,'” Key said, laughing.
“That’s it in a nutshell, man.”
‘Is Coach OK?’: Saban’s softer side
When Kiffin’s three children were young, he remembers getting an invitation to the Sabans’ house for Easter. His first thought was: “I’m not getting yelled at on Easter. I get yelled at enough at the football complex.”
Kiffin’s former wife, Layla, was in town with the kids and convinced him to go.
“It was amazing. Coach was completely different,” Kiffin said. “I think his first grandchild had just been born, and he was walking around with [Kiffin’s son] Knox and helping him find an egg. I was like, ‘Is Coach OK?’ Because I’d never really seen that side of him before.”
Kiffin had a similar experience with Tom Coughlin earlier in his career while working with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
“Seeing that side of Coach Saban, it’s then that I understood that two of the most demanding coaches I’ve worked for were one way at home and then one way when they walked into that football building,” Kiffin said. “They felt like they had to be that way, to hold people accountable, to be tough on people, and obviously it worked because they’re both legendary coaches.
“But it was cool seeing that side of Coach Saban.”
FLORIDA COACH BILLY Napier said Saban and his wife, Terry, who have been married for 52 years, were an unbelievable team in the way they took care of their coaches and the coaches’ families.
“Don’t underestimate the impact Miss Terry had on him and all that touched that program,” Napier said. “I was always grateful when I got there in 2011 after being let go as offensive coordinator at Clemson and kind of starting my career over. He believed in me and gave me another chance, the same thing he’s done for so many coaches.”
More than just a professional boost, Napier feels even more indebted to the Sabans from a personal standpoint.
“People don’t see some of the things that he does for you behind the scenes, both he and Miss Terry,” Napier said. “My wife went through some things medically, and they were there for us. They take care of their people. My dad got diagnosed with ALS my first year as a receivers coach. I wasn’t worth a wood nickel that year, and Coach Saban helped me navigate that when I probably didn’t do my job to the best of my ability. But he had a pulse for how challenging that was for me and guided me through it.”
TEXAS COACH STEVE Sarkisian has said several times that Saban saved his career when he brought Sarkisian on as an analyst in 2016 after alcohol issues led to his firing at USC.
“He believed in me at a time when I was having a hard time even getting an interview,” Sarkisian said.
Following Texas’ 34-24 victory over Alabama last season in Tuscaloosa, Sarkisian made sure Saban knew how much he meant to him.
“None of this would’ve been possible without you,” Sarkisian told Saban at midfield.
One of only three former assistants to beat Saban, along with Smart and Fisher, Sarkisian thought about that moment at Bryant-Denny Stadium when he heard Saban was retiring.
“As great as it was for us to go and get that win, that would never have been possible without Nick Saban, ironically,” Sarkisian said. “To think that was where I kind of resurrected my career, in that stadium with him, to have that moment — which was our biggest moment in three years here — was something I won’t forget. I’m forever grateful that he and Miss Terry were both there for me at a tough time in my life.”
‘There’s no turning back’: Decisive calls, memorable moments
One of Saban’s most memorable in-game decisions was making the switch from Jalen Hurts, who was 25-2 as Alabama’s starting quarterback, to true freshman Tua Tagovailoa at halftime of the Crimson Tide’s come-from-behind 26-23 win over Georgia to capture the 2017 national championship. Tagovailoa’s 41-yard touchdown pass to DeVonta Smith in overtime won the title for the Tide.
Alabama trailed 13-0 at the half and hadn’t been able to generate any offense. A week earlier, the Tide scored only two offensive touchdowns in a semifinal win over Clemson.
“We come into the locker room at halftime of that Georgia game, and the first question Nick has is, ‘What the hell is going on? What do we need to do to get the offense going?'” Locksley said.
Locksley was then the receivers coach and co-offensive coordinator. His younger receivers were already restless about not being more involved in the passing game. Locksley looked around the locker room and spoke up.
“‘Coach, if you’re asking my opinion and you want to get the offense going, let’s give Tua a shot,'” Locksley recalled saying. “I said, ‘I’ll talk to Jalen, and if it doesn’t work, we can always go back to Jalen.'”
Any critical decision was always Saban’s call, but he wanted input from his coaches, especially in tough situations, and that’s something else that set him apart, according to Locksley.
“There was never a flinch whatsoever on his part to make that move,” Locksley said. “But you’ve also got to remember that he’s the same guy that made a decision a year before when we lost the championship to go with a new playcaller [Sarkisian] for the championship game. That’s the thing about Coach. He listens to people, but he’s the one that makes the decision. And when he does, there’s no turning back.”
Locksley said he’s not sure Saban could have managed the whole Hurts-Tagovailoa situation any better. Tagovailoa had taken most of the first-team reps prior to the semifinal against Clemson after Hurts got the flu.
“I’m not sure the ball hit the ground in any of those practices,” Locksley said. “Tua was unbelievable.”
But when Tagovailoa didn’t start against Clemson, Locksley said Tagovailoa was boiling mad and ready to transfer. It was a similar story with Hurts after he was benched in the national title game. After all, he had lost only two games as a starter — and one of those was the national championship game against Clemson the year before, when his 30-yard touchdown run gave Alabama the lead with a little more than two minutes remaining.
“It’s never easy to juggle those types of things. Only one quarterback can play, but Coach does a great job of managing it and allowing the people who are closest to the players to be a big part of it,” Locksley said. “And then in 2018, it was almost a reversal. Jalen comes in and saves us in the SEC championship game. He was ready. Those things don’t happen by accident. The tone is set at the top.”
CRISTOBAL ARRIVED AT Alabama in 2013, the year after the Crimson Tide lost to Johnny Manziel and Texas A&M in Tuscaloosa. The pregame meeting the next year in College Station remains etched in Cristobal’s mind.
“Every detail in those meetings is covered, from where the sun rises and sets, does it affect the returners, the referees, what they are prone to calling, all that stuff,” Cristobal said.
The Tide had heard all offseason that they were going to have to go play at Kyle Field, and that Manziel, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, was going to light them up again. Cristobal said the mood in the locker room was uptight, and Saban sensed it right away.
“Hey man, ain’t no one going to die today, you know?” Saban insisted. “Get your asses focused and enthused about this opportunity we have today. Ain’t no one going to die.”
Cristobal said the tension was immediately relieved.
“We got back to business,” Cristobal said. “He had a knack for doing stuff that made everybody in the organization better.”
Alabama beat Texas A&M 49-42 in one of the best college football games of the year.
THE WEEK BEFORE the 2016 national championship game, Saban abruptly cut ties with Kiffin, who was his offensive coordinator and playcaller for Alabama’s semifinal win over Washington. Saban had Sarkisian, then an offensive analyst, call plays for the title game against Clemson; the Tigers would beat the Tide 35-31 on a last-second touchdown. Kiffin had been named Florida Atlantic’s coach a few weeks earlier, and Saban didn’t feel Kiffin was fully invested in his duties at Alabama.
After Saban retired, Kiffin said he reached out to reiterate what he has told Saban almost every time he has seen him since that parting.
“I just told him that I appreciated him so much, and as I look back now at any issues we had between us, they were 100 percent my fault,” Kiffin said. “I didn’t see it at the time, but I see it now.
“It’s a lot like being a parent. You don’t always understand when you’re a kid and your parents are telling you things, but then you get older and have your own kids, and you’re like, ‘OK, now I get it.'”
Kiffin said he apologized for being so difficult, but that Saban was very gracious and talked about what a good run they had together — three SEC championships, three College Football Playoff appearances, one national title and a 40-3 record, including a 26-game winning streak to end their three years together.
“I would have really struggled with myself as an assistant coach at that stage, and I told Coach that,” Kiffin said. “Now I’m the head coach, and I see that. Yes, I would have liked me on game day because there was a lot of success and all the plays that we created. All that stuff would have been great, but always questioning things, wanting to know why and arguing back. … I don’t think I would have put up with it as a head coach.”
SABAN AND FISHER were raised a “few hollers over,” as Jimbo would say, in West Virginia, but they were never what you would call close friends after their days of working together at LSU from 2000 to 2004. Their relationship seemingly went up in flames prior to the 2022 season.
You’ve heard this part before. Saban, who once called Fisher the best offensive coordinator he ever had at the college or pro level, said at a May 18, 2022, fundraiser that Texas A&M “bought” all its players in the previous signing class with name, image and likeness deals. An enraged Fisher, then the Aggies’ coach, fired back the next day in a hastily called news conference. He called Saban a “narcissist” and described Saban’s comments as “despicable.” Saban later apologized and said he shouldn’t have singled out specific schools, but he didn’t back down on his stance that NIL was being used as a guise for pay-for-play.
Fisher said he hasn’t talked to Saban since his retirement, but is glad to see his old boss walking away when he’s young and healthy enough to do some of the other things he wants.
“I know everybody thinks we’re enemies because I said what I said, but I truly believe Nick’s a good guy and a genuine guy,” said Fisher, who was fired toward the end of the 2023 season at Texas A&M. “Now, Nick likes to win and will do what he needs to do to win. We all will. Maybe it’s the West Virginia hillbilly in us. We like to hit you and scratch you. But at the end of the day, we give a s—. That’s the way we grew up.
“I remember when we got to LSU, Nick was sort of an outsider, hadn’t coached in the SEC and really hadn’t won crazily. But none of that fazed him. You could see his vision right away, his tenacity to do it the way he knew it had to be done despite what anybody else thought. There was nothing outside his program that affected him.
“A lot of it is that we’re the same guy, Nick and me, and are point-blank about what’s on our minds.”
‘If I want to call a timeout, I’ll call a damn timeout’
Throughout his coaching career, Saban loved organizing pickup 3-on-3 basketball games with his coaches at lunchtime. Only in the offseason, mind you.
The games at times were intense, and legend has it that Saban picked the teams and occasionally picked who would guard him. At Alabama, that guy often was current Arkansas State athletic director Jeff Purinton, who was then one of Saban’s most trusted confidants as associate athletic director for football communications.
“My first years with him, I loved it and looked forward to it. My last six years, I dreaded it,” Smart said with a laugh.
Smart participated in those games at all three of his coaching stops with Saban.
“We played outside when we were with the Miami Dolphins, some great games,” said Smart, noting that current South Carolina receivers coach James Coley and former Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett were part of the games.
One of the funnier stories, and Smart says Coley tells it best, was when Saban was at LSU. They went from 4-on-4 to 3-on-3, making it a faster-paced game. Coley said Saban, in his mid-50s at the time, became winded and called timeout after a loose ball. But Stan Hixon, who was on Saban’s team, was the only one who heard Saban call timeout. Derek Dooley was on the opposite team and thought Hixon had called the timeout. Dooley yelled, “There’s no timeouts out here.”
Dooley had no idea the call came from Saban, and Saban was none too pleased.
“Hey Derek, I’m 50 years old, and I’m about to have a heart attack. If I want to call a timeout, I’ll call a damn timeout,” Saban huffed.
1:55
Nick Saban on where it all began for him as a coach
In 2018, Nick Saban told the story of the exact moment he started thinking like a coach.
Fisher said he and Saban were always on the same team during their LSU years. They would play on the practice court underneath the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
“We’d always go to 11. Nick was the point guard, and I was the shooting guard,” said Fisher, who was Saban’s offensive coordinator at the time. “Our third player would vary. I mean, we’d go at it too. I wasn’t going to lose, and neither was Nick. I’d score about nine of our points, and he’d score the other two. He could handle the ball and shoot, but I could shoot from long range. It was some serious basketball.”
Former Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt, who worked two stints under Saban at Alabama, joked that he was banged up all the time because he was constantly diving for loose balls to impress Saban, especially those first few years when Pruitt was a younger, off-field staff member.
Saban continued with his lunchtime games until spring 2019 before having hip replacement surgery. Those early years at Alabama were the best, according to Smart.
The Alabama assistants had an hour for lunch, but they were required by Saban to make recruiting calls during the break.
“So the coaches that he demanded play basketball over that lunch hour would show up across the street at Coleman Coliseum with their phones in their hands making recruiting calls,” Smart said. “Nick would jog down the steps, and we all made sure he saw us making calls before the games started.”
Kiffin doesn’t have any hoops stories because he strategically made it a point not to participate.
“I knew better,” Kiffin said. “When I got there, they told me all about the games and how Coach picks the teams and that if you cover him, you can’t foul him and probably should let him score some. And I’m like, ‘Wrong dude. That ain’t happening. I’ll just go for a jog or something.’
“I knew if I went over there, it probably wasn’t going to go well. So I never once went and played basketball.”
‘Nobody does that’: What makes Saban unique
Smart’s Bulldogs have won two of the past three national championships, and of Saban’s former assistants, he is probably the most like his old boss. Both defensive masterminds, they were together for four of Saban’s six national titles at Alabama.
“His ability to manage and motivate people was unlike anything I’ve seen, and I mean everybody in the organization,” said Smart, who beat Saban to capture the 2021 national championship but was winless in their other five meetings as a head coach.
“He leads by example. Nobody outworks Nick. He doesn’t hold you to a different standard than he holds himself. He’s smart and that’s one thing, but his message always has a purpose. Everything’s calculated, and he just does it better than everybody else.”
Saban was 31-3 against his former assistants, with one of those losses coming this past season to Sarkisian, who guided the Longhorns to their first CFP appearance and their first 12-win season since 2009. Sarkisian, the offensive coordinator on Alabama’s 2020 national championship team, marvels at Saban’s run, especially considering that in five of the 10 years prior to his arrival, the Tide failed to produce a winning season.
“I mean, from when he took [Alabama] over in 2007 and the state of the program then to what he was able to do, even until the last snap of his career, is unbelievable,” Sarkisian said. “He instilled in everybody every day that they were competing to be a national champion. He set a standard and a bar for excellence in our sport that we’re all striving to get to.”
Beyond the wins, Saban’s ability to lead resonates with Cristobal.
“He’s the epitome of an elite CEO, and one of the greatest things you learn from him is that he has a relentless attack on human nature because his belief in upholding the standards of an organization is as prioritized as it can be,” Cristobal said. “He made it very clear to us that once you don’t hold people to that elite standard, an entire organization could fall to pieces. He made sure he kept us on edge, and he challenged us all the time.”
Saban never deviated from his core beliefs, but he was continuously self-scouting, tinkering and trying to gain an edge.
“I appreciated the level of detail, the competitive spirit, the constant search for improvement and the ability to be flexible and to always be evaluating things and trying to get better and staying ahead of the curve and thinking outside the box,” Napier said. “You don’t do what he’s done unless you’re just a little bit different.”
Dantonio, elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in January, coached defensive backs under Saban at Michigan State.
“He always talked about two things: consistency and performance,” Dantonio said. “He’s been consistent throughout, and he’s built something that lasts. That’s his legacy, and I think that’s what everybody wants to do. I can still hear Nick saying something that stayed with me throughout my coaching career: ‘If you’re not coaching it, you’re letting it happen.’ There’s nothing he didn’t coach.”
Saban produced 43 first-round NFL draft picks during his 17 seasons at Alabama, with more ahead in the upcoming draft.
“It’s easy to say they just had better players. They did. Really good players,” Sarkisian said. “It’s easy to say, man, he’s the greatest defensive mind. Yeah, he’s a great defensive mind. But his ability to adapt schematically, his ability to continue to bring in new coaches year after year on both sides of the ball, his ability to motivate the different teams, the different personalities and different quarterbacks that led to all those championships is what’s fascinating.”
At the end of the day, though, Saban never lost sight of the main ingredient in winning those championships.
“He always sort of laughs and smiles and says, ‘Hey, I can’t coach bad players, either,'” Dantonio said.
Locksley, who had been a head coach or coordinator for 15 years before he joined Saban in 2016 as an offensive analyst, said his three years at Alabama were “the equivalent of Muslims going to Mecca or Catholics going to the Vatican. … For me, it was like when a college professor takes a sabbatical. That’s how much I learned.”
He has been resolute in building his Maryland program with the same blueprint Saban used.
“I tell people all the time that I’ve got grandma’s famous chocolate chip cookie recipe from my time with him,” he said. “If the process tells you to put two cups of chocolate chips in there, why the hell are you going to put three? If it says three eggs, why would you put two? Everything fits and has a perfect place for how it fits.”
Even Kiffin, who is never at a loss for words, struggles to put Saban’s career in proper perspective.
“I always look at coaching, and a lot of times, somebody has a run when they hit it right with an elite quarterback who’s a top-10 pick and then they have drop-offs,” Kiffin said. “But there’s no one who’s done it like Coach has for the last 17 years and then LSU before that. He’s withstood all these changes over the years, coaching changes and the game changing, and just kept winning.
“I mean, nobody does that. It just doesn’t happen, and I’m not sure it ever will again.”
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Max Olson
When you’re a veteran college quarterback transferring to your fourth school in six years, you know what to expect if you check the internet comments.
He’s still around? Geez.
Isn’t he like 30 years old?
He needs to move on with his life. He isn’t going to the league.
It’s time to hit LinkedIn and get a job.
And yet, despite the haters, we’ve reached a peak moment for journeyman quarterbacks across college football. Freshmen who began college in 2020 during the COVID pandemic were granted an extra year of eligibility by the NCAA. Now they’re still hanging around as sixth-year seniors. Nearly 40 quarterbacks from the 2020 class came back this year for one more season at the FBS level.
They’re 23- and 24-year-old grizzled veterans who feel even older inside their locker rooms. They have college degrees. Their partying days are done. They’re training and preparing like pros, trying to squeeze every last drop out of their college days.
College football today is in many ways unrecognizable compared to when they were high schoolers. The explosion of NIL and the transfer portal, big-name coach firings, conference realignment, the expanded College Football Playoff, the pandemic, collectives, agents, revenue sharing — you name it, these quarterbacks went through it.
“Not a lot of people have experienced this type of roller-coaster ride in college football,” SMU quarterback Tyler Van Dyke said.
The days of QBs bouncing from school to school for starting jobs aren’t going away. In this new era of unlimited transfers, 85% of top-50 quarterback recruits from 2018 to 2021 have transferred and more than 40% have switched schools multiple times. But we are nearing the end of the road for a historic fraternity of super seniors granted additional eligibility because of the pandemic.
This is the story of four journeyman quarterbacks — Chandler Morris, Robby Ashford, Drew Pyne and Van Dyke — still chasing glory in Year 6.
Jump to:
Chandler Morris | Robby Ashford
Drew Pyne | Tyler Van Dyke
Chandler Morris: Oklahoma | TCU | North Texas | Virginia
Chandler Morris was ready to retire from football. After four years of setbacks, he’d had enough.
“Football just wasn’t loving me back,” Morris said. “It’s kind of hard to love something if it’s not loving you back.”
He started fighting those thoughts two years ago at TCU. Midway through his first full season as a starter, Morris hurt his left knee and was sidelined for four games. Young backup Josh Hoover stepped in to replace him. Morris got healthy but never got his starting job back, and he couldn’t understand why.
By then, though, little had gone according to plan. Morris had initially committed to play for his father, Chad Morris, at Arkansas. Five months later, Arkansas fired his dad. The younger Morris responded to that gut punch by signing with Oklahoma. He arrived in Norman in the summer of 2020, amid the COVID outbreak, knowing nothing would seem normal.
There wasn’t much bonding time with his freshman class. Gathering outside the football facility was discouraged. Players were taking online courses in their dorms, masking up, testing for COVID daily and trying to get through a college football season played in empty stadiums.
“I don’t know if I was very happy there,” Morris said. “But I don’t know if there was a happy freshman anywhere in the country that year.”
After a season behind Spencer Rattler and with Caleb Williams on the way, Morris had a sense Oklahoma wasn’t the right fit. He transferred home to TCU to play for Gary Patterson. Eight games into the 2021 season, Patterson’s successful 21-year tenure ended abruptly when he was fired on Halloween. The next day, Morris learned he’d make his first career start.
The Horned Frogs had nothing to lose against No. 12-ranked rival Baylor, and that’s exactly how Morris played. He lit up one of the Big 12’s best defenses with 461 passing yards, 70 rushing yards and 3 touchdowns in a shocking 30-28 upset.
“I was probably too young for that success,” Morris said. “I probably thought I had arrived. I went out there and just dominated them. I was kind of like an overnight success.”
Morris was no less dominant the following August in his preseason competition with senior Max Duggan. TCU coaches still swear to this day it wasn’t a close call. Morris earned the right to be QB1 as the Frogs kicked off the Sonny Dykes era. But he didn’t make it through the season opener, exiting with an MCL sprain in his left knee after a Colorado defender landed on his leg.
“Max took it over,” Morris said, “and the rest was history.”
A few weeks later, when Duggan led a 55-24 blowout win over Oklahoma, Morris went home and cried. He knew he’d missed his chance. TCU went on a surprising 13-1 run to the CFP national championship game, with Duggan finishing runner-up for the Heisman Trophy. Morris enjoyed going on that wild ride, but it wasn’t easy to set personal feelings aside. He badly wanted to be out there playing.
Everything finally seemed aligned for Morris entering 2023. The Horned Frogs got off to a nightmare start with a home loss to Colorado they never saw coming, but Morris settled in from there and was playing well until another MCL sprain shut him down. Dykes and his coaches went with Hoover to finish a rough 5-7 season. Morris felt he was being pushed out the door.
Chad Morris knew how frustrated and hurt his son was — and how seriously he was contemplating retirement — but urged him to give it one more shot. North Texas offered a fresh start. Chandler finished his degree at TCU in the spring of 2024, taking four classes as a regular student and staying away from football. He needed the time off to reset.
“I learned not to put my identity into football,” Morris said. “I think it’s easier said than done when that’s all you do. I had my identity wrapped up in that, and once it got stripped away from me, I was in a low place.”
North Texas coach Eric Morris (no relation) watched his QB get his swagger back last season. Chandler credits his coaches for fully tailoring the Mean Green offense to his strengths and preferences. “They poured so much confidence into me,” he said. Morris went in thinking 2024 would be his final college season. Then he put up 4,016 total yards, seventh most in FBS, and had $1 million offers coming in from Power 4 programs.
If Morris was going to move back up for his sixth year, he wanted to be around good people. He trusted Virginia coach Tony Elliott, who had worked with his dad at Clemson. He knew Virginia was loading up on transfers and going all-in for 2025. Once he got on campus and saw the personnel, he knew the team could compete.
“You can’t ask for much more than an opportunity to come to a place like this and try to get ’em back on the map,” he said.
Nothing about the Cavaliers’ 8-1 start and rise to No. 12 in the AP poll, their highest ranking since 2004, has surprised their QB. Their double-overtime triumph over then-No. 8 Florida State got everyone’s attention, and they’ve survived two more overtime thrillers since. When asked if this team is giving him 2022 TCU vibes, Morris didn’t hesitate.
“I really do compare it to that year, just based off our locker room and how close and how hungry we are,” Morris said. “They’ve lost quite a bit of games over the years. They’re ready to be done with that.”
Even on a seven-game win streak, nothing comes easy. Morris has battled a shoulder injury for most of the season. Elliott says he’s been a “warrior” throughout. After everything Morris has gone through, good luck convincing him to miss a single snap of this ACC title chase.
“I wouldn’t pick to be in college football for six years,” Morris said, “but here I am.”
Robby Ashford: Oregon | Auburn | South Carolina | Wake Forest
For Wake Forest quarterback Robby Ashford, the trials of the past six years have felt beyond his control.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m trash, because I’ve been to four Power 4 schools,” Ashford joked. “I can’t be that bad. It’s just been situations I couldn’t handle. I went through a lot of things I couldn’t really do anything about.”
He was committed to Ole Miss back in 2019, the same year Elijah Moore pretended to urinate in the end zone during the Egg Bowl. Rebels coach Matt Luke was in Hoover, Alabama, visiting Ashford when he got the call and realized he was getting fired.
Ashford had little time to pick his next school and moved across the country to play both football and baseball at Oregon. If the 2020 MLB draft hadn’t been cut from 40 rounds down to five due to COVID, the former top-200 draft prospect might have picked pro baseball out of high school.
After two seasons as a backup QB in Eugene, Ashford was eager to play. But then Mario Cristobal left for Miami, Dan Lanning took over and his new offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham brought in Bo Nix. Ashford hit the portal and went home to Auburn. He found a coach who believed in him in Bryan Harsin, and he became a starter three games into the 2022 season.
During his first start against Missouri, Ashford seriously injured his throwing shoulder: second-degree AC joint sprain, bruised rotator cuff, sprained trap muscle. He played hurt for nine games, not saying a word about it publicly until the season ended.
“I was getting four shots a game in my shoulder and neck to be able to play,” he said. “I wasn’t going to tell anybody so teams wouldn’t hammer my shoulder. The only people who really know are with you every day. They can’t go out there and tell everybody, ‘Bro, y’all don’t understand, Robby is hurt. He’s playing with a messed-up shoulder.’ But that gave everybody a perception about me.”
After a four-game slide, Auburn fired Harsin. The backlash Ashford experienced during that 5-7 season was unlike anything he anticipated. He knew all about the passion in the SEC, but nothing prepares a 20-year-old for an inbox full of racial slurs and death threats after losses. Ashford said it wasn’t just direct messages on social media; he’d get texts from unknown numbers too.
“You try not to look at it, but sometimes it pops up while you’re scrolling,” he said. “It’s like you can’t get away from it, even when you’re not trying to search for it. That’s part of it that comes with being a Black quarterback.”
Ashford didn’t want to show his face on campus. He knows he played too timid, too nervous about making matters worse.
“It gets to the point where you almost have to start worrying about your personal safety,” he admitted. His father, Robert, encouraged him to keep his head up and keep trusting it would work out.
Ashford gave up baseball in the spring of 2023, a sacrifice he was willing to make to prove to new Auburn coach Hugh Freeze he was focused on leading the Tigers. He felt great about his performance in spring practice and was the spring game offensive MVP. Weeks later, Freeze landed transfer QB Payton Thorne from Michigan State.
“I got backdoored,” Ashford said. “I got my job taken without losing it. If I would’ve known I was going to lose my job without playing bad, I would’ve played baseball. You live and learn.”
Ashford hadn’t graduated and couldn’t leave. He backed up Thorne for a season before moving on and was glad to get out.
“It felt like a toxic environment,” Ashford said.
He moved on to South Carolina, believing it was important to stay in the SEC, but lost an offseason competition to LaNorris Sellers. Ashford remembers his first time meeting the redshirt freshman who wore glasses even with his helmet on.
“I was like, ‘You’re the kid that’s, like, really good?'” Ashford recalls with a laugh. “It just don’t seem like it when you meet him. Then he gets on that field and, yeah, you’re the kid that’s really good.”
Ashford mentored and pushed Sellers as he became a breakout star for the Gamecocks. He wasn’t thrilled about his backup role but had nothing but love for Sellers, whom he considers a little brother. With one season left, Ashford reentered the portal seeking an opportunity.
Wake Forest had a new coaching staff and needed a veteran starter. Ashford suspects he might be the lowest-paid QB1 in the Power 4, but he doesn’t care. He just wanted to play.
Ashford is right where he wanted to be, but it’s been a tough year. His father passed away suddenly at the age of 53 in April. He’s still working through the grief, and it hit him hard 15 minutes before his first Wake Forest start.
“He’d been there for me through the ups and downs,” Robby said. “I was hoping he got to see this year.”
Robby continues to tough it out without him. He’s trying to lead this 5-3 team despite an injured thumb on his throwing hand. Ashford and backup Deshawn Purdie pulled off a 13-12 upset of SMU in Week 9, but they had few answers for Florida State’s defense in a 42-7 loss Saturday.
Ashford hasn’t stopped believing, even in Year 6, that his best football is still ahead of him.
“There’s been a lot of days where it’s like, man, why is this going on?” he said. “But it’s kind of brought me a great sense of hope, just to know I can keep going. I’ve gotta keep going.”
Drew Pyne: Notre Dame | Arizona State | Missouri | Bowling Green
Drew Pyne’s legendary Connecticut high school football coach, Lou Marinelli, had a saying that stuck with the quarterback: Football is just like life, but sped up.
For Pyne, the college football journey began incredibly early. He received scholarship offers as an eighth grader back in 2016, thanks to a highlight tape of his mom’s Pop Warner footage cut together on iMovie. Pyne threw at an Alabama camp and suddenly had an offer from Nick Saban.
“I kinda stopped being a kid in eighth grade after that,” Pyne said.
The kid who grew up quickly in a Catholic family committed to his dream school, Notre Dame, as a high school sophomore. Ian Book took Pyne under his wing during Pyne’s freshman year in 2020 as the Fighting Irish rolled through a bizarre season in the ACC to the College Football Playoff and a Rose Bowl semifinal played in Texas.
Pyne went in for two snaps against No. 1 Alabama and saw eight future NFL draft picks on the other side of the ball. He couldn’t wait to lead the Irish back to that big stage.
After another year of waiting behind Jack Coan, Pyne felt ready. Tyler Buchner won the starting job entering 2022 but suffered a shoulder injury. In the first quarter of his first start in South Bend, Pyne accidentally went viral. The NBC broadcast captured offensive coordinator Tommy Rees cursing out his QB from the coaches’ box after three poor drives. Welcome to the big leagues.
Pyne’s run as the starting quarterback of the Fighting Irish, the goal he’d chased his whole life, lasted just 10 games. A four-loss season in Year 1 under Marcus Freeman wasn’t the goal for a team with preseason top-five expectations. But Pyne did go 8-2 as a starter with victories over Clemson, North Carolina, Syracuse and BYU.
“I’m real proud of my time there,” Pyne said. “I still root for Notre Dame and Coach Freeman, who was great to me. I’m still best friends with a lot of those guys. It’s a great place. I loved it there.”
So why leave? By the end of the season, it was clear Freeman and Rees wanted a transfer QB to push or replace Pyne and Buchner. Pyne was one semester away from graduating and hoped to become a captain in 2023, but he was informed there’d be a competition. He sensed the odds were stacked against him and exited before the bowl game to hunt for his next home.
Pyne transferred to Arizona State. And then Missouri. And now Bowling Green. He didn’t expect this many twists and turns.
“Going in, I never wanted to transfer or do any of that,” Pyne said. “But that’s just the way the tide flows in today’s game. I love football and I want to play football. That’s why I’ve done what I’ve done.”
At Arizona State, he teamed up with Dillingham to try to lead a revival. A pulled hamstring during a preseason scrimmage was the first setback. Pyne came back several weeks early — refusing to miss a rematch with Caleb Williams after losing to USC in his Notre Dame finale — with the help of daily sessions in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
“All I wanted to do was to play Caleb again and try to beat him,” Pyne said. “So I said screw it, I don’t care if my leg falls off, I’m going to play in that USC game.”
And how’d that go?
“I popped my left groin, separated my AC joint, got a pinched nerve in my neck and got sacked eight times — but we took ’em to the fourth quarter,” he said. “Let me tell you, the next morning was pretty tough.”
Pyne’s season was over. He’d wake up at 4:30 a.m. each day to go in for physical therapy. He’d get down on himself as doubt crept in. And he didn’t know what to do next.
He returned to Notre Dame, reenrolling for the spring to take the final classes needed for his degree. Pyne worked out with a local trainer and hoped someone would take a chance on him.
Missouri brought in Pyne to back up senior Brady Cook. He had to relieve an injured Cook against Alabama and threw three interceptions in a 34-0 loss. What stuck with him, though, was the way Luther Burden III and fellow teammates kept encouraging him. “They know I try as hard as I can,” Pyne said. “Those guys had my back.”
He rewarded their faith the following week against Oklahoma, guiding a 75-yard touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter to tie it up. Less than a minute later, Missouri defensive end Zion Young scooped up a fumble and scored to stun the Sooners.
“I was on the bench saying a prayer,” Pyne said. “I go, ‘God, I feel like things don’t go my way all the time. Can you please let something go my way?’ And then, boom, I look up and Zion’s running in for the touchdown.”
After one of the proudest nights of his life, Pyne wanted to chase that feeling in 2025. He joined Bowling Green because he was sold on new coach Eddie George and the culture he’s building. Pyne knows a thing or two about winning over a new team by now, but this group embraced its 24-year-old captain.
When Pyne made his fifth trip to the Manning Passing Academy this summer, Archie Manning named him captain of the college QBs. After all, he’d roomed with Brock Purdy in his first year.
“Now I’m the old head,” he said.
Pyne is going through more trying times this season. He just returned to action Saturday in a loss to Buffalo after missing three games with a leg injury. The Falcons are 3-6 and trying to get back on track to chasing bowl eligibility in November.
Believe it or not, thanks to the Arizona State injury, Pyne has one more season of eligibility in 2026 if he wants it. He hasn’t decided, saying his life could go in a million directions after this year. At the moment, he’s just grateful for what he found at Bowling Green.
“It’s really all you could ask for, especially for a guy like me at the tail end of my career, being a starter, a leader and a captain,” Pyne said. “It’s like playing Road to Glory, but in real life.”
Tyler Van Dyke: Miami | Wisconsin | SMU
Entering the 2022 season, some were calling Tyler Van Dyke, the reigning ACC Rookie of the Year, a first-round NFL draft talent alongside Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud.
“It was a lot of praise, but I believed it,” Van Dyke said, “I thought I was that good. And I know I’m that good when I’m healthy and playing my best.”
Young and Stroud are now third-year NFL starters. Van Dyke is still fighting to get back on their level. He’s off the national radar for now, a backup at SMU recovering from a significant leg injury and preparing for one more chance.
Van Dyke reunited with Rhett Lashlee, the coach who gave him so much confidence as a redshirt freshman subbing for injured starter D’Eriq King at Miami. Now King is his position coach. They went on a good run together in 2021, but it wasn’t enough to save Manny Diaz’s job. New coach Mario Cristobal offered effusive praise for the quarterback he inherited, comparing Van Dyke to Justin Herbert and declaring there wasn’t a better QB in the country.
But at the end of 2022, Van Dyke wasn’t ready for the NFL. He got a wake-up call four games in when Cristobal benched him during an ugly loss to Middle Tennessee. “Everything’s not rainbows and butterflies like 2021,” Van Dyke said. In the moment, he felt like the fan base was flipping on him from love to hate.
Van Dyke started meeting with a sports psychologist to talk it out and clear his head. He threw for 496 yards in his next start, a close loss to Drake Maye and North Carolina, and felt back on track after a road win at Virginia Tech. Then he suffered a third-degree AC joint sprain in his throwing shoulder, forcing him to sit out most of the final five games. After a disappointing 5-7 season, Van Dyke considered leaving Miami.
In the spring of 2023, Alabama tried to persuade Van Dyke to transfer. And he was listening.
“To be honest, I was pretty much all-in on going there,” Van Dyke said.
The Crimson Tide had lost Young to the NFL and were unsure of what they had in Jalen Milroe. Van Dyke said Rees, then the OC at Alabama, tried to recruit him to Notre Dame to replace Pyne. Now he was circling back. For Van Dyke, it wasn’t a financial decision. The NIL money back then was nothing like it is today. This was about his future. A great year at Alabama could get him back to first-round status.
But he didn’t transfer. Cristobal found out about the Alabama talks and convinced him to stay. Van Dyke doesn’t know how that leaked out, but he was in a tough spot and ultimately preferred to stick with his team.
“I felt good about it at the end of the day,” Van Dyke said. “I didn’t want to move. I had a lot of friends on that team. I was the leader of the team. Everybody loved me and I loved the team. I wanted to stay at Miami.”
The Hurricanes started 4-0 in 2023 before a baffling loss to Georgia Tech, eschewing victory formation to close out a win and fumbling away the game. Van Dyke got hurt the following week against North Carolina, a bruise on his knee that spread to his quad. He tried to play through the rare leg ailment, called a Morel-Lavallée lesion, but wasn’t close to his best and finished with 14 turnovers. It was clearly time to move on.
The weekly unpredictability of those last two Miami seasons wore him out. The Canes would win and feel like contenders. They’d lose and, to Van Dyke, it felt like the end of the world. He says he has a lot of respect for Cristobal, but the situation deteriorated over time.
“It ended up not working out for both of us,” Van Dyke said.
Miami replaced him with a future No. 1 pick in Cam Ward. For Van Dyke, it stung to see all the effusive praise for Ward’s leadership last year come with unsubtle digs at the previous QB.
“Leadership is easy when everything’s going well,” he said. “It’s easy to blame someone, it’s easy to put that scapegoat on someone, when things go wrong. It was a tough year. I felt like that was a narrative on me that was so unnecessary and ridiculous. Even some coaches who recruited me in the portal were questioning my leadership.
“I remember Cristobal, when the Alabama situation came up, saying to me: ‘You mean more than you know to this team. You’re the guy. Everybody looks up to you.’ He said that to my face. After that, for all them to question my leadership? That one hurt a little bit.”
Van Dyke was relieved to have a dozen offers in the portal, and he called Lashlee for advice. Wisconsin felt like the right fit for 2024, a Big Ten program where he could win and revive his draft stock. Three games in, Van Dyke got to face Alabama.
He tried scrambling on a third down to extend the Badgers’ opening drive. His right foot got stuck in turf as a defender slammed him down along the sideline. Had he known officials threw a flag for defensive holding, Van Dyke would’ve walked out of bounds. Instead, he fought for extra yards and it cost him the season.
Van Dyke didn’t just tear the ACL in his right knee and his meniscus. He also damaged cartilage at the bottom of his femur, which required three allograft plugs. The injuries meant a more than 12-month recovery timeline. He spent two long months on crutches watching the Badgers stumble to 5-7, wondering if he’d ever play another snap.
Van Dyke went back in the portal. Lashlee and King offered what he needed most: a place to rehabilitate with the people he trusts most. Lashlee didn’t bring him to Dallas to be SMU’s starter or backup for 2025. He was giving his former QB an opportunity to recover with full support and no pressure.
“Some guys on the team when they first met me, they were like, ‘Oh my god, you were at Miami. You were good at Miami,'” Van Dyke says with a chuckle. “I’d say, ‘Yeah…'”
It’s an odd experience, taking a backseat when you’ve been a starter for four years. Van Dyke is suiting up for games and is close to being cleared, but he’s there to support starter Kevin Jennings. He’s offering tips in film sessions and charting plays during games as he ponders getting into coaching after he’s done playing.
Van Dyke is working toward his big comeback and returning for a seventh year in 2026. He’s determined to start again, whether that’s at SMU or elsewhere, but he’s happy where he is these days. He’ll turn 25 in March. He’s getting married next summer. That’s all he knows for now.
“In the past, I would always look at my future like if I don’t do this, this and this, it’s not going to work out for me,” Van Dyke said. “Now I’m taking it one day at a time.”
The book on his career isn’t closed yet. The veteran passer grins when he considers what people will say about his journey extending into Year 7.
“It’s going to surprise a lot of people that I’m still in college,” Van Dyke. “But everyone has a different story to tell.”
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Tim Kurkjian
We are borrowing, with permission, from brilliant writer Steve Rushin, the lede from his game story in Sports Illustrated from the 1991 World Series between the Twins and Braves. The truth is inelastic when it comes to the 88th World Series. It is impossible to stretch. It isn’t necessary to appraise the nine days just past from some distant horizon of historical perspective. Let us call this World Series what it is, now, while its seven games still ring in our ears: the greatest that was ever played.
With apologies to 1991, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays just finished the greatest World Series. Not because all the games were great — some weren’t. All were flawed, but all were marvelously fun, interesting and entertaining. It was the greatest World Series because of its compelling storylines, some of which were impossible to believe: an 18-inning game, a historic pitching performance by a 22-year-old, the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history, the first World Series game to begin with back-to-back home runs, the first game-ending, 7-4 double play in World Series history. It featured a bizarre, three-pitch opera from a pitcher who hadn’t worked in relief in seven years, the final major league game for the greatest pitcher of this era and a Game 7 for the ages, for all ages, a masterpiece featuring an unforgettable, ironman pitching performance that we might never see again.
The Blue Jays, who finished last in the American League East in 2024, were in the World Series for the first time since repeating as world champions in 1992 and 1993. The Dodgers were trying to become the first team to repeat as world champions since the New York Yankees from 1998 to 2000. In Game 7, Toronto started Max Scherzer, 41, the oldest pitcher to start a Game 7, the man who also started the last Game 7 — in 2019 for the Washington Nationals. The Dodgers started the most remarkable player in the history of baseball, Shohei Ohtani, who was working on three days’ rest. Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr., so dominant in this postseason, called it “the biggest day of my life in baseball.”
Game 7 was epic, one of only six Game 7s of the World Series to go extra innings. The Dodgers fell behind 3-0 but won 5-4 in 11 breathtaking innings, in part because Dodgers manager Dave Roberts used all four of his aces, Ohtani, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and the World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Yamamoto threw 96 pitches the day before in winning Game 6, then miraculously pitched the final 2⅔ innings of Game 7, throwing 34 pitches, to become the fourth pitcher to win Game 6 and Game 7 of the World Series. It was one of the greatest pitching performances in World Series history.
“He is one of the greatest pitchers on the planet,” Dodgers catcher Will Smith said. “What he did tonight was amazing.”
It was Smith’s home run off Shane Bieber in the 11th inning that provided the winning run, and made it six years in a row that a player named Will Smith has been a part of a World Series-winning team. And yet Smith’s game-winning homer wasn’t the biggest homer of the night for the Dodgers. Second baseman and No. 9 hitter Miguel Rojas, who helped win Game 6 with four terrific defensive plays, stunningly homered with one out in the ninth inning off Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman to tie the score, Rojas’ first extra-base hit of the postseason. Rojas joined Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski in 1960 as the only players in World Series history to hit a game-winning or game-tying home run in the ninth inning of a Game 7.
It was a devastating loss for the Blue Jays, who played so exceptionally well in the first five games. They scored the most runs (105) in a single postseason of any team in history, but when they needed to get a big hit, they didn’t: In Game 6, they went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position; in Game 7, they went 3-for-17. Don’t blame infielder Ernie Clement, whose 30 hits were the most hits ever by any player in one postseason. In the ninth inning, he was robbed of a World Series-winning hit when center fielder Andy Pages, a defensive replacement, made a spectacular leaping catch in left-center field with two outs and the bases loaded. An inning later, Clement, a brilliant defensive infielder who uses a Mizuno glove that he bought from an elderly Japanese woman on eBay, put his arm around Blue Jays dugout reporter Hazel Mae when he noticed that her head was down in disappointment when the Blue Jays didn’t win in the ninth.
“Are you OK?” Clement asked her. “You’re going to be OK. Don’t worry. We’re going to be OK, too. Don’t worry.”
This series was full of worry. The only way to try to make sense of these stressful seven games is to view them chronologically. In Game 1, the Blue Jays started Trey Yesavage, who made his major league debut Sept. 15. Yesavage pitched four innings in an 11-4 victory in Game 1, which featured Bo Bichette‘s first game since Sept. 6 — he singled in his first at-bat on a 3-0 pitch. Bichette, Toronto’s primary shortstop, played second base for the first time in his major league career, marking the first time since 1931 that an infielder started a World Series game at a position he had never played in the big leagues.
The game was broken open in the sixth on a pinch-hit grand slam — a first in World Series history — by Addison Barger, who slept the night before on a pullout couch in the hotel room of teammate Davis Schneider. “I woke up on my friend’s couch the morning of the game, and after the game, the Hall of Fame asked me for my spikes,” Barger said.
The aptly named Barger, one of several Toronto players who became folk heroes in October, was asked why he swings so hard on every pitch.
“I was the smallest kid on our team — I was 4-foot-10 as a freshman, I was 5-feet, 90 pounds as a sophomore,” he said. “My dad had me play up. I was a small 13-year-old playing against 18-year-olds. My only hope was to swing as hard as I could.”
Game 2 featured the remarkable Yamamoto, who, among other preparations for his constant chase of the perfect pitch, throws a javelin before games and does an insane stretching routine that is painful just to watch. He silenced the relentless Blue Jays lineup on four hits to become the first pitcher since Curt Schilling in 2001 to throw back-to-back complete games in one postseason. “He is hard to hit because he has elite command, his delivery is deceptive, everything comes out of the same arm slot and he is short [5-foot-10],” said Blue Jays infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa. “With Justin Verlander [who is tall and has a high release point], you can see his fastball coming out of the sky. With [Yamamoto], you can’t see it because he is short.”
Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw said, “If I could do it over again, I would throw a javelin in between starts.”
Kershaw, the greatest pitcher of his generation, pitched in Game 3. He was one of 19 pitchers, 10 of them Dodgers (a record number for a World Series game), to work the 18-inning game, which lasted 6 hours, 39 minutes and included 609 pitches. It is tied (in innings) for the longest World Series game, matching 2018’s Game 3 between the Boston Red Sox and Dodgers, also at Dodger Stadium. In 2018, Max Muncy won the game with a walk-off homer in the 18th. Freddie Freeman won this one — becoming the first player in major league history to hit two walk-off home runs in the World Series.
“If Freddie didn’t end with a homer, I would have,” Muncy said, laughing, the next day. “So amazing. A first baseman leads off the 18th with a walk-off homer on a 3-2 pitch. Same as I did [in 2018].”
Muncy agreed that if he had hit another 18th-inning, walk-off homer seven years later, “your head would have exploded.”
And yet, Freeman wasn’t the biggest star of the game. Ohtani had nine plate appearances and reached base nine times: No one in World Series history had reached seven times in one game. Only four others in major league history had reached base nine times in a game, regular or postseason. Ohtani hit two doubles and two home runs in his first four at-bats — the second player with four extra-base hits in a World Series game — and walked his final five plate appearances, four of them intentionally, another World Series record. Until that game, only Albert Pujols in 2011 had been walked intentionally with the bases empty in a World Series game. And Ohtani did it three times, including twice in a three-inning span.
“I mean, really, 9-for-9? Are you kidding me?” Freeman said in amazement. “Only Shohei could do that.”
And yet Ohtani wasn’t the best story of the game, either. Will Klein, who had thrown 22 innings in his major league career, pitched the final four scoreless innings to get the victory.
“I looked around in the 14th inning and realized I was the only one left in the pen,” he said.
Klein spent the first three rounds of the playoffs in the Get Hot Camp in Arizona, where Dodger players train just in case they need to be added to the roster because of an injury. He threw a simulated game at Dodger Stadium before the World Series and threw strikes. “[The Dodgers] called me and told me to go to Toronto,” Klein said. “I didn’t think there was any chance I’d be activated; I thought I was just a taxi squad guy. Then, they told me that I was going to be activated for the World Series. I thought . . . sweet!”
Klein threw 72 pitches, twice as many as he had thrown in a major league game, in Game 3.
“I got hundreds and hundreds of text messages after the game, some from people I didn’t know,” Klein said. Sandy Koufax, the legendary Dodger pitcher, came into the clubhouse after the game to congratulate him.
“I didn’t know what to say, I could barely speak,” Klein said. “I mean. . .he is Sandy Koufax!”
Game 4 featured — again — the greatness of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. In the third inning, he gave the Blue Jays a 2-1 lead with a two-run homer off Ohtani, a marvelous at-bat for the growth of the game. It was two of the biggest stars in baseball — one from the Dominican Republic, but born in Canada, the other from Japan — going head-to-head on the biggest stage in baseball. Guerrero won this confrontation, as he won most matchups in the postseason: He hit .397 with 8 home runs, 15 RBIs and only 7 strikeouts, astounding in this strikeout era. And now, the world knows that Guerrero, 26, isn’t some lumbering, unathletic first baseman. He has a great instinct for the game. He has won a Gold Glove at first base, he is a finalist for another this year and he made two great defensive plays in Game 7. He also is a well-above-average runner.
“Sometime in July, I went to Vladdy with a bar chart that I put together about great players and their running speed, and the way they run the bases,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “The graph had [Aaron] Judge, [Manny] Machado and Vladdy. I asked him, ‘Who is the fastest of these three?’ He didn’t know. I said, ‘Vladdy, you are.”’
Guerrero’s homer off Ohtani gave the Blue Jays the lead for good, but they tacked on four runs in the seventh to seal the win. The biggest hit was provided by Clement, who personifies the gritty Blue Jays. He was released by the A’s in 2022 after going 1-for-18. He made a swing change in 2023, and that has resulted in him becoming a quality every-day player in the major leagues.
“Ernie shoots 65 in golf,” Davis Schneider said. “He’s one of those guys who is good at everything. Hockey. pingpong. Everything.”
Davis Schneider, who was nearly released three times in the minor leagues, also personifies the gutsy Blue Jays. “All the guys on this team took a different path to get here,” he said. “It’s one reason we are here.”
Schneider, hitting leadoff in Game 5 due to the intercostal injury to DH George Springer, led off the game with a homer off Snell, who had allowed one homer in his previous 50 innings. Guerrero followed with another homer, marking the first time in history that the first two hitters homered in a World Series game.
That was plenty for Yesavage, who was making his eighth major league start, five in the postseason, to join Joe Black (1952) as the only pitchers in history to start more games in the postseason than they had in their regular-season careers. Yesavage was unhittable for seven innings. He became the first rookie to strike out 12 in a World Series game. He became the first pitcher to strike out 12 and not walk a batter in a Series game. He joined Koufax as the only pitchers with 10 strikeouts in the first five innings of a World Series game.
“I never met him until he got here [Sept. 15]. I might have met him in spring training, but if I did, I don’t remember,” Davis Schneider said. “Now, he’s doing amazing things. He is such a modest dude walking around the clubhouse. He has made the best hitters in the world look like they’ve never swung a bat before.”
Game 6 was a classic — not on the Game 6 level of Buckner in 1986, Puckett in 1991, Freese in 2011, Fisk in 1975 or Carter in 1993, but its finish was jarring. Yamamoto started. One Blue Jay said before the game, “We know he is on a 1,000-pitch count tonight.” Instead, Yamamoto was taken out after six innings and 96 pitches with a 3-1 lead. Roki Sasaki had a shaky eighth inning, then hit Alejandro Kirk to start the ninth. Barger followed with a ringing line drive to left-center field. The ball impossibly lodged between the padding on the outfield wall and the warning track. Dodgers center fielder Justin Dean, cued by left fielder Enrique Hernandez, threw up his hands in hopes the umpires would rule it an automatic two bases, which they did.
“I have never seen a ball get lodged in there,” John Schneider said.
“I’ve tried to wedge a ball in there,” Davis Schneider said. “And I couldn’t do it.”
“I walk every stadium before every series to see what might come up,” Dodgers third-base coach Dino Ebel said. “I walked that outfield area, and I said, ‘This is clean. Nothing can get stuck in there.’ Then, it did.”
It was a bad break for the Blue Jays, who might have scored a run on that play, and Barger might have made it to third with no outs if the ball had caromed instead of plugged. In came Glasnow, who was supposed to start Game 7, but instead was summoned for his first relief appearance since 2018. He got Clement to pop out to first base on the first pitch. Two pitches later, Andres Gimenez hit a soft liner to left.
“I thought, ‘Please don’t drop, please don’t drop,”’ Glasnow said.
Hernandez, a natural infielder, charged the ball like an infielder, caught it in the air on the run and made a quick throw to Rojas, who made a terrific catch. Barger was doubled off second base, one of the biggest baserunning mistakes in World Series history: It is the only postseason game to end on a 7-4 double play. Thanks to Hernandez and Rojas, Glasnow got three outs on three pitches for his first career save.
“The [defensive metric] card had me playing shallow on that play, but I then moved in seven feet,” Hernandez. “If he hits it over my head, I will live with the consequences. I was not going to let a ball land in front of me. I trust my instincts over a computer any day.”
“It was a bad read by me,” Barger said.
The bad read set up one of the greatest Game 7s in World Series history, one that cemented the Dodgers’ dynasty. They won their third World Series in this decade and became the first team since the Yankees in 1953-58 to win three World Series and have a winning percentage of .630 in a six-year span. The Blue Jays did something equally important in this postseason: They showed the world how the game can be played, with elite defense, putting balls in play, treating every at-bat like a fistfight, valuing the hit, not just the home run, and taking the game to the opponent. They also showed that character, chemistry and camaraderie in the clubhouse, and on the field, are greatly valued.
“I just played a season with my 30 best friends,” Clement said after losing Game 7. “I just finished crying for about an hour. This is the closest team I have ever been on. I just love coming to work with these guys.”
There has never been a bad read by my friend Steve Rushin, from whom I borrowed the lede to his epic story from the epic 1991 World Series. He had watched this postseason from afar, and like so many people across the country, across the globe, he marveled at Ohtani, Yamamoto, Yesavage, Glasnow, Vladdy, Ernie, and all the other stars, storylines and sensational plays that produced the greatest World Series ever.
He texted me before Game 7.
Speaking for all baseball fans, it read: “What a time to be alive.”
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