The United Football League team’s head coach spent five seasons at Alabama.
Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron and coach Nick Saban talk during a timeout at the Sugar Bowl against Oklahoma on Jan. 2, 2014, at Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.with coach Nick Saban. Three of those seasons ended with national championships for the Crimson Tide, and McCarron worked as the starting quarterback for two of those title teams.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that what the former St. Paul’s Episcopal star saw at Alabama would influence his approach in his first coaching assignment. How that might manifest itself was expressed in McCarron’s most recent meeting with the press as he prepares for the Birmingham Stallions’ 2026 season as the “I’ve never been big on social media or the noise in general,” McCarron said. “I think as a team, as a coaching staff, as an organization, you got to be able to lock in to where your feet are right there. If you allow external factors to come in and mess with the chemistry or mess with your mentals, I mean, you’re just setting yourself up for failure. So you cut out as many external factors and distractions as possible and really get the guys to buy into a system and buy into a mindset. “That’s what made us special at Alabama, was everybody was focused and prepared for one goal. And it’s not the result part of it, and saying, ‘Oh, well, we want to go 10 and O.’ It’s the process that leads up to that result. It’s the work each and every day that you have to put in to be successful. It’s the day-in and day-out grind and understanding that it’s going to be a grind, and getting 1 percent better each and every day to where you set yourself up for success in the end, so I think that’s the biggest thing for us. “We can’t be result-oriented as an organization and thinking that, ‘Hey, we’re going to go undefeated’ or ‘Our schedule’s so hard.’ Just focus on the task at hand right there and how you can get better that day. And if you can get better each and every day, you’re going to put yourself in a situation to be successful in the end.” McCarron and the Stallions have most of their initial roster work done as the team prepares for training camp next month, but there are additions and subtractions continuing to the lineup. “The biggest thing for us was trying to eliminate as many guys as possible through this process of we didn’t want guys that were distractions in college or shots in the NFL,” McCarron said of the player-acquisition process. “We didn’t care how talented they were. We just wanted good dudes on our team because again it goes back to the mindset and everybody believing in one thing. “If you can get guys that can believe in a team motto -- and especially in this league where you’re not guaranteed to have these guys for multiple years. It’s not the NFL where they’re under contract and set. It’s basically how I view college football now. Everybody’s a free agent at the end of the year, really and truly. And I think the teams that you watch in college football that are the most successful are the ones that buy into the team mindset and it’s not a me sport, because everything is shifted to a me mindset in this game. “And, you know, coach Saban used to say it all the time: If we can achieve the ultimate goal as a team and put our egos at the door, put them to the side and focus on the team mindset, if we’re winning, everybody’s going to get a shot because organizations and other leaders in the NFL and on other teams, they want winners. They want guys that understand how to do it the right way. “There’s a reason why so many guys from Alabama were drafted each and every year. I think we led all of college football with the amount of guys, while coach Saban was there, drafted or even on rosters is because organizations, GMs, owners of teams wanted guys that understood what it took to win and the hard work that you have to put in to achieve that ultimate goal. “And so if we can get that and buy into that mindset as a team early and say: Listen, you might not play every down, OK? You might be a role player, but if you’re great at that role and we’re winning as a team, these scouts and these GMs are going to call us and say, ‘Hey, I want to take a look at that guy; tell me about that guy’ because they want to pick guys from teams that are winning because they understand something went right there. “So that’s the biggest thing for us in this whole process was getting guys that will be as little of a distraction as possible and guys that are high-character guys that will buy into a team mindset and help achieve the ultimate goal.”against the Louisville Kings at 7 p.m. CDT March 27 at Lynn Family Field in Louisville, Kentucky. FOX will televise the game.The 2025 season is the 12th that Mark Inabinett has covered players with Alabama football roots in the NFL. Inabinett's byline appeared in a newspaper for the first time in 1976. The intervening years have...
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