Almost 13 years ago, Alabama’s All-American Center, Barrett Jones, shoved second-year starting QB AJ McCarron in the middle of the 2013 BCS Championship game. Bama was already leading comfortably 42-14 over Notre Dame, but Jones’ delay in handing the snap on 2nd-and-6 forced the play to third down. Though Alabama had a comfortable lead, McCarron was not happy.

He came fuming down on Jones for the mistake, and right then came the ‘shove.’ McCarron took Nick Saban’s principles to the word and letter. That moment was a premonition of his relentless attitude that showed wherever he went. Now, the same philosophy has led the QB to his first professional win as a head coach.

“Just super proud of our guys,” A.J McCarron told FOX Sports after his Birmingham Stallions defeated the Louisville Kings in the UFL on March 27. “But it’s only one. Our biggest thing is worrying about the process. Don’t worry about the results… I thought we did a great job of that tonight, and we’ll start all over again next week.”

McCarron became the Stallions’ head coach in December last year. This was his first coaching role, after spending 11 years in the NFL and the last few years in the XFL and UFL. While that experience will definitely come in handy, McCarron taking after Saban is also showing in the way he conducts himself. Because in Tuscaloosa, the “process” was what kept the veteran coach going all those years.

McCarron enrolled at Alabama in 2008 as a 4-star prospect and left Alabama as a 3-time National Championship winner. By that time, the process had become a mantra in the Alabama locker room. a successful player. To this day, Saban remains adamant about the process being the key differentiator between a normal player, and a successful player.

“I think when people are process-oriented — they need to find, this is what I want and this is what I need to do it,” Nick Saban said on College Gameday in 2025. “Then they have the discipline to execute it. That’s when you get a talented player, who becomes a great player.” When one listens to what AJ McCarron has to say about his coaching methodology, they’ll know how big of a disciple he is of Saban.

“Where I implement this stuff is being process oriented,” McCarron told AL.com about his philosophy for leading the Stallions. “Everything’s about how much, ‘How fast can you create success,’ instead of, ‘Okay, what does it take to create that success?’ It’s not just a viral video. It’s not just overnight millionaire. It’s all the long nights and days before.”

The Birmingham Stallions is just the start of AJ McCarron’s legacy, and he’s already got a 1-0 head start. But we know that the new head coach won’t be busy celebrating, because he’s got the next game to worry about, and then the next. The 35-year-old head coach still has a long way to go, and fans can be confident that this journey is going to put him on the map once again. Very rarely does the Saban pedigree fail in the world of football.

AJ McCarron takes a chapter from his Bama days to lend Kalen DeBoer advice

Things back in Tuscaloosa are in a bit of a conundrum. Bama head coach Kalen DeBoer hasn’t yet named his starting QB and probably will wait for Austin Mack and Keelon Rusell to battle it out. Having already been a part of such races, AJ McCarron had some advice for DeBoer in choosing his QB1.

“The thing I look for in this situation is, what quarterback can separate from going out each and every day in practice and not feeling like he’s competing against the other guy, and he’s competing more against himself,” McCarron said on The Dynasty podcast. “That was one of the things that I dealt with during my time, going into my first year as a starter. I had to not worry about what Phillip [Sims] did in practice.”

McCarron took college football by storm and gave Alabama the 2012 and 2013 national championships. He kept his head down and focused on himself, and what he could do to help the team. Sims left Alabama only a year after he transferred there from Connecticut, because McCarron’s game and attitude had locked down the QB1 spot for himself.

More than two decades later, things remain the same. McCarron, unfortunately, couldn’t get enough playing time in the NFL, subjecting him to people doubting his worth in the sport. But he never left the gridiron and tried to make a difference for whichever team wanted his skills. Even now, on the sidelines as head coach, AJ McCarron lives up to his own words.