A year after Nick Saban became the head coach at Alabama, John Harbaugh took the same position with the Baltimore Ravens. In January, Saban retired after his 17th season with the Crimson Tide. Harbaugh is busy preparing for his 17th season with the NFL team.

This offseason, Harbaugh has handled a task familiar to Saban – replacing assistant coaches who have contributed to winning teams. It’s a job that gets harder to execute successfully, Harbaugh said, as the head coach gets older – a challenge that Saban handled through age 72.

“Big challenge,” Harbaugh said on Tuesday during a press conference at the NFL Scouting Combine. “You have to be very conscientious about that. You have to understand it’s a small world, football, but it’s a very sought-after world. There’s a lot of people trying to get in. There’s a lot of talented people out there that could really make a difference, and you just have to figure out who they are.

“I had a great conversation — I hope coach Saban doesn’t get mad at me for sharing this — but happened to talk to him about two weeks ago. He was talking about all different things. One of the things he talked about was all the coaching changes he had over the last 10 years because of their success. Coaches would come and be there for a year or two, then they’d go get a head-coaching job. Look at (Texas coach Steve Sarkisian) and others.

“He just felt like the challenge of finding new coaches, hiring new coaches, especially as you get a little bit older — when you’re young and you’re 35, you know who all the 35-year-old coaches are. Now, you get to be in your 60s, or 70s in Coach’s case, you probably know who the 60- and 70-year-old coaches are, but you don’t know the 35-year-old coaches as much.

“Then he had to train those guys every single year. I think that does become a big challenge of success. Nobody had it at a higher level than him, so that’s a huge part of it.”

At 61 years old, Harbaugh had Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald leave for the Seattle Seahawks’ head-coach post, defensive-backs coach Dennard Wilson take the Tennessee Titans’ defensive-coordinator job and defensive-line coach Anthony Weaver become the Miami Dolphins’ defensive coordinator among the staff losses this offseason.

“We had a lot of positions to fill,” Harbaugh said, “and we filled them with guys that are going to be great fits for us that are going to make us even better. That’s what you try to do. You try to acquire the best players you can, hire the best coaches you can, just build the best team that you can. Then if it goes well, guys get an opportunity to go somewhere else and kind of chase their career and advance. Players move on and sign for bigger contracts or they get a new contract with you.

“That’s all good stuff. It’s not stuff that you sit back and you lament and say, ‘How are we going to replace this guy or that guy?’ For 16 years, we’ve had that same refrain after every single season, and to me, it’s a positive thing, so the guys coming in are going to be amazing.”

Since his first Baltimore defensive coordinator Rex Ryan in 2008, Harbaugh has had six defensive coordinators, and all had experience in the Ravens’ system. For 2024, Zack Orr will be Baltimore’s defensive coordinator after three seasons as a linebacker, four as a defensive analyst and two as inside-linebackers coach for Baltimore.

“We’re not going to change our defensive structure,” Harbaugh said. “We’ve elevated Zach, so that’s continuity there with what we’re doing on defense, and we’ve had continuity with our defensive-coordinator hire since 2008. That’s been a trend, and I think we’ve given up the least points in the league since 2008 by far. So we have a little tradition going there.

“We have a pretty good feel for what we want to do on defense. We just want to keep building on that, evolving it, getting better with it.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.