Video: Rolando McClain's dominant Alabama highlights
The Terminator.
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PSA: I'm headed out to Orlando today for a full week of being a Disney Adult, so it'll be quiet here on the site until the 22nd. I'll have a new video dropping on that date, plus more 2026 season preview content the week of the 25th.
By the time Nick Saban was officially announced as Alabama's Head Coach on January 3, 2007, the Crimson Tide had nine players still committed to the program in their 2007 recruiting class. One of those nine players Saban's predecessor Mike Shula left him was linebacker Rolando McClain. McClain, a four-star linebacker from Decatur, Al, stuck with his commitment and was determined to see the field as a true freshman. Saban –who'd been coaching in the NFL the prior two years– didn't know much about McClain, and told him he'd have to learn the defense for that to become a reality. McClain doing exactly that in short order is why he might be the greatest gift Saban ever received as he began molding Alabama into the most dominant dynasty in college football history.
It'd be easy (and correct) to say that McClain was so important to the early years of Saban's Alabama solely because he was an awesome player. He started the 2007 season opener as a true freshman, played in all 13 games, and was named a freshman All-American. Over the next two years, he was a two-time First Team All-SEC honoree, a unanimous All-American (2009), with a trophy case that included the Butkus, Lambert, and SEC Defensive Player of the Year Awards - plus a BCS National Title. His physical attributes (6-3, 254 pounds, with fantastic speed for his size), made McClain the best and most imposing linebacker in the country. That's why it wasn't surprising when he jumped to the NFL after his junior year, or that the Oakland Raiders (RIP) took him eighth overall in the 2010 NFL Draft. McClain's athletic ability and on-field accomplishments were only a part of why he was so important to the foundation Saban built with his first three Alabama teams, though.
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Rolando McClain meant so much to those teams because he thought the game just as well as he played it. For a coach determined to get his teams to execute the complex way he saw the game, McClain was an extension of Saban out on the field. I have no doubt Saban would've turned Alabama into the program they became anyway, but having someone like McClain to act as a coach on the field –while also kicking ass at the same time– right from the start accelerated the process. As I was making this video, there were at least five different times I heard announcers praising McClain's football IQ - basically describing him as, "Nick Saban wearing football pads and a helmet." Saban himself had high praise for McClain's defensive aptitude:
"Some guys understand their position, but I would venture to guess [Rolando] knows what every player is supposed to do on every play on defense, and he knows like I know who didn't do right, and when he didn't do right, sometimes immediately."
In that same article, Saban talks about athletic intuition and compares McClain's on the football field to Albert Pujols' as a hitter in baseball. In case the latter half of Pujols' career being a bit of a meme made you forget just exactly who he was through 2009, here's some helpful numbers for reference:
I'll admit - with even as much college football as I was watching in 2009, I didn't truly appreciate just how awesome McClain was at Alabama until I made this video. I at least got a bit of firsthand experience of it afterwards watching him with the Cowboys in 2014. He was an integral part of that defense, and finished second in Comeback Player of the Year voting for a 12-4 squad that was a terrible call away from the NFC title. (Shoutout to McClain's game-clinching interception of Russell Wilson in Seattle.)
If you're unfamiliar with McClain's game from his days at Alabama, I think you'll walk away with the same conclusions I did about him after watching this video. If you're a Crimson Tide fan? Have fun re-living his dominance, and why he's one of the most important players of Saban's 17-year run at Alabama.
