Nick Saban is 11-0 against his former assistants. Kirby Smart will look to end that trend

It hasn't gone well when Nick Saban's former assistants face their old boss.

Actually, it has been terrible.

Saban has posted an 11-0 record against former assistants who took the reins at another program. In Monday's national championship game, Saban will coach against another former assistant for the 12th time. This time, he will face Georgia head coach Kirby Smart.

Smart was on Saban's Alabama staff for nine consecutive years. After spending the first year as a defensive backs coach, Smart became Saban's defensive coordinator for the next eight seasons. Taking the Georgia job after he helped Alabama win the 2015 national title, Smart led the Bulldogs from an 8-5 campaign in year one to a 13-1 record with a Rose Bowl win in year two.

This will be the first time Saban and Smart have coached against one another.

So how has Saban been so successful against his former assistant coaches?

"I think it's about the players. And I think in most of those games, if the other guy had the players that we had, they might have beat us," Saban said. "So it's not about the coaches. I mean, I didn't catch any passes. I didn't make any tackles (in the Sugar Bowl against Clemson). I didn't do any of that. ... The players did it all."

While Saban has had his assistants' numbers, only one that he has faced is still with his respective program.

Saban is 3-0 against both former Tennessee head coach Derek Dooley and former Florida head coach Jim McElwain. Dooley's Tennessee teams weren't competitive, and McElwain's Florida teams, in the 2015 and 2016 SEC Championship games, didn't match Alabama's talent. Saban also has a win over McElwain when he was the head coach at Colorado State.

Saban's teams twice defeated Will Muschamp — now with South Carolina — when he was the head coach of Florida. They also beat up on Mark Dantonio's Michigan State team two times. Dantonio is the only former assistant Saban has beaten who still coaches the same team.

This season, Saban's Alabama squad defeated Florida State, coached by Jimbo Fisher, 24-7 in a game that saw quarterback Deondre Francois sustain a season-ending injury. Fisher has since left for Texas A&M.

In total, Saban's Alabama teams have posted a combined score of 427-111 in those 11 games. That's good for an average score of 39-10 in each meeting against a former assistant.

The one theme that stands out is that each team didn't have the same talent level as Alabama, including this year's Florida State team that began the season No. 3 in the rankings but finished with a 7-6 overall record. The Dantonio-led Michigan State teams were probably the closest talent-wise, and yet they were steamrolled in two separate bowl games.

What's different about Monday's meeting is the fact that Georgia appears to match up with Alabama from a talent perspective. When Smart took over, he inherited a recruiting class of 2014 that featured Nick Chubb, Sony Michel, Isaiah Wynn, Jeb Blazevich, Lorenzo Carter and Malkom Parrish. A handful of redshirted players from the recruiting class of 2013 are at his disposal too, including Davin Bellamy, John Atkins, Reggie Carter and Aaron Davis.

With that kind of senior leadership available, it is easy to see why Georgia has reached this year's title game. Throw in key contributors such as Roquan Smith and Jake Fromm, and you have the makings of perhaps the most talented roster Saban has ever seen from a former assistant.

"You prepare the players the best you can, but we've had pretty good teams around here," Saban said. "And most of the guys were going to rebuild programs, so maybe we're a little bit ahead of them. And if they had had our team, they'd have probably beat us."

This story was originally published January 4, 2018 at 4:40 PM with the headline "Nick Saban is 11-0 against his former assistants. Kirby Smart will look to end that trend."