LSU’s Andrew Whitworth Credits Saban Touch For Rise To Stardom And La. Sports Hall Of Fame

July 3, 2025 Glenn Guilbeau LSU Football 0
Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame inductee/football star Andrew Whitworth won 3 state titles at West Monroe, a national championship at LSU and an NFC title for the Los Angeles Rams - all in the Superdome in New Orleans - and won a Super Bowl for the Rams in Los Angeles. (La. Sports Hall of Fame photo).

By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor

NATCHITOCHES – Andrew Whitworth probably did not need Nick Saban to reach the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame last Saturday here, even though Saban happened to be going in at the same time.

Whitworth played for the legendary Don Shows, who was inducted into the Hall in 2011, at West Monroe High, winning three state championships in the Superdome in New Orleans in 1997, ’98 and 2000. He played in Super Bowl LIII in the 2018 season and won Super Bowl LVI in the 2021 season under coach Sean McVay as the oldest offensive tackle ever to play in the Super Bowl at 40 before retiring two months later.

A giant of a man at 6-foot-7 and 330 pounds when he played, but slimmed down now below 300, Whitworth was the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year in 2021, a first team All-Pro in 2015 and ’17 and a Pro Bowler in 2012 and 2015-17 after the Bengals took him in the second round in 2006. He is now an analyst on Amazon for the NFL’s Thursday Night Football television. And the Pro Football Hall of Fame is near as well.

After signing as a 35-year-old free agent with the Rams for three years at $36 million following 16 seasons with Cincinnati from 2006-16, Whitworth had dinner with McVay.

“Sean McVay and I have been documented as being really close,” Whitworth said over the weekend. “But a lot of that is talking to him about a lot of the things I learned from Nick. When I went to dinner with Sean after I signed, I told him, ‘Hey, man, you’re the closest thing I’ve ever met to Nick Saban.'”

That was 13 years after Saban last coached Whitworth in the 2004 season at LSU.

Whitworth was part of Saban’s first recruiting class in which he had a full year to gather at LSU in 2001. It was his first of two No. 1 classes in just five years at the school and included such future NFL first round picks as defensive end Marcus Spears, wide receiver Michael Clayton and running back Joseph Addai, as well as the late Marquise Hill at defensive end in the second round.

LSU has not signed a No. 1 class since.

And Saban convinced Whitworth to move from tight end to offensive tackle while Whitworth was still at West Monroe, much like Saban persuaded Spears to move from tight end to defensive end out of Southern Lab. He also recruited Whitworth away from Florida.

“I always grew up a Danny Wuerffel and Steve Spurrier fan,” Whitworth said. “Fred Taylor was my favorite back. I wanted to be a Gator so bad. I went to camp there when I was playing tight end. I decided that’s where I was going to go. And then LSU hired this guy named Nick Saban. And he came into my living room, sat with my parents and me, and the rest is history. He convinced me of his vision that he was going to bring to life.”

And he did quickly with the first winning season at since 1997 in his first year in 2000, the program’s first Southeastern Conference title since 1988 in 2001, first traditional New Year’s Day Bowl since the Sugar in 1968 at the Sugar again in the ’01 season and the Tigers’ first football national championship since 1958 in the 2003 season.

“Even if all the time, you didn’t quite understand the rants, or what they were going after, clearly the pictures came to everybody’s mind once they were finished,” Whitworth said.

People have asked Whitworth what was behind the success of Saban, who won an NCAA record seven national championships (one at LSU, six at Alabama) before retiring after the 2023 season and becoming an Emmy-winning ESPN analyst.

“Talk to him for three minutes,” he said. “I’d been to see Houston Nutt (Arkansas), Phillip Fulmer (Tennessee), Steve Spurrier (Florida) on recruiting trips in high school, and they all used really big tight ends. And Nick said, ‘We could sign you as a tight end, and you could come and play that for a year. But I think the sooner you play offensive tackle, you’ll have a pretty good run.'”

And Whitworth was all but hypnotized.

“I was like, ‘Man, this is the first coach who told me I should be a lineman.’ Which is the most insulting thing ever for a tight end. But the way Nick said it, you’re like, ‘Hmm, I might be a linemen.’ And it became cool. And I actually asked my senior year at West Monroe if I could move to tackle. That was the first time that somebody was honest with me in the recruiting process.”

At the induction ceremony Saturday night with Saban sitting a few feet away, Whitworth cracked, “I don’t know if Nick’s been right about a lot, but he was definitely right about that one, right?”

Whitworth signed with LSU as the No. 5 offensive lineman in the nation by Rivals.com from a state that historically did not produce and still has not produced a lot of elite offensive linemen. And Saban red-shirted him in 2001. And when Whitworth walked into a meeting late, he might as well have been a walk-on.

“I was the example that day,” he said. “It was one of those things you never forget, but also you grow to appreciate it. It was an even field for everybody. Nick was so good at knowing when to really push people’s buttons and when to make examples, and when not to.”

And when to let his players hit the French Quarter in New Orleans during the week leading up to the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4, 2004, against Oklahoma. Even though the Tigers would have their first chance to win a national championship since LSU capped one off at 11-0 in 1958 at the same Sugar Bowl. (At the time, national titles were awarded before the bowls.)

“One of the chill-est weeks I’ve ever seen was before we played in that game,” Whitworth said. “I thought he did a great job being chill, and then knowing when it was time to really bring the energy. Most of the week, he let us have fun. He knew it was New Orleans, where so many of the team was from, and we had so many Louisiana kids.”

But a few days before kick-off, it was game on.

“Just great management of our emotions,” Whitworth said. “A lot of those big games, especially in the NFL, it’s about your ability to control your emotions and what you’re using them for. Because there were times during the regular season when you were like, ‘Man, his thumb’s on you all the time.’ That week, he was so in control. It was like he was playing a piano with us. And he knew when the big part of the song was coming, and when we were going to have to get after it.”

And LSU hit all the high notes in a 21-14 win.

“And what a week. I always tell people I don’t know if I had a moment in the NFL that I felt more like a rock star than the week we had as LSU players in the first time back in the national championship in the city of New Orleans,” said Whitworth, who played in two Super Bowls and won one. “Now, we’ve got NIL, so we’re safe to say that not a kid on our team paid for a thing that whole week in New Orleans. I can assure you that.”

Whitworth returned to the dome for yet another championship game on Jan. 20, 2019, for the NFC title against the New Orleans Saints. The Rams won, 26-23, in overtime after the documented worst call in NFL playoff history. Obvious pass interference was not called late in regulation on the Rams. Had it been called, the Saints would have been at first and goal inside the 5-yard line with extremely high likelihood of running out most of the clock before scoring the winning touchdown. Instead, the Saints settled for a field goal, and the Rams’ kicked a field goal to send it into OT.

“Uh, controversial at best,” Whitworth smiled. “But to win an NFC championship there, and to really say, ‘Hey, I won a championship here at every level of sports in the Superdome’ was special. Every time I walk into the Superdome, it just felt like going to your favorite playground as a kid. For a Louisiana kid, I don’t know how I could ever dream of that scenario. That’s something I think about more than anything else.”

Whitworth and his family still live in the Los Angeles area, but West Monroe, Baton Rouge, the Superdome and now Natchitoches remain strong in his heart.

“Obviously winning a Super Bowl was amazing, too. So many emotional moments,” he said. “The success I had in this state – the moments and memories are most special to me. So, this honor to me means a lot because of that – the pride I have in this place and its people. So, thank you.”

Backstage, moments before the inductees walked out, Whitworth was pacing and talking on his cell phone.

“I don’t like to sit down,” he said.

“If he was still playing for me, I’d tell him to put that thing away,” Saban said. “We had a rule against those. But I’m not going to tell him anything now.”

Whitworth hasn’t needed a piano player for years.

“When you use terms like, ‘Iron sharpens iron (or ivory). And you talk about culture and how it affects people, and how you do things, I think of Nick Saban,” Whitworth said. “His impact on me in general, my leadership style as a captain in the NFL, my passion for being great at things I’m a part of – a lot of that all derives from Nick Saban.”

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