The end of the Pete Golding era at Alabama came Friday when Alabama’s defensive coordinator reportedly accepted the same position at Ole Miss.

But it’s something Nick Saban said almost two years ago that frames the discussion about Golding’s four seasons in charge of Alabama’s defense and what is realistic to come next.

“I think what people visualize as good defense is a little bit different now than it used to be,” Saban said in March 2021. “People are not giving up eight points a game anymore. I’ve talked a lot about how people take advantage of the rules that we have in college football and how they favor the offense, and how it’s very difficult to play really good defense now.”

Saban noted that day how “everybody complains about the defense,” an acknowledgement of the rising levels of fan angst about that side of the ball since Golding took over as Alabama’s sole defensive coordinator in 2019.

RELATED: Possible Alabama defensive coordinator candidates after Pete Golding exit

How fans will remember Golding — and how they will judge his successor — depends on where the bar is set and how much they buy into what Saban has said about modern college football.

Is the goal still to win with consistently dominating defense, as Alabama did in 2009 by allowing 12.1 points per game, and again in 2011 (8.2) and 2012 (10.9)? Or can the defense simply be good enough to allow a dominant offense to win? That was the case in 2020, when Alabama gave up 19.4 points per game but scored 48.5.

Consider what Saban said on the topic two years ago.

“It used to be that good defense beats good offense. Good defense doesn’t beat good offense anymore,” Saban told ESPN in 2020. “It used to be if you had a good defense, other people weren’t going to score. You were always going to be in the game. I’m telling you: It ain’t that way anymore.”

Golding presided over an Alabama defense this season that allowed 18.2 points per game, ninth-best in the country and second-best in the SEC behind Georgia at 14.3. He leaves Tuscaloosa with a national championship ring and three SEC title rings, but with few wins fans are likely to remember primarily for Alabama’s defensive effort. Those were the hallmark of the Tide under former defensive coordinators Kirby Smart (2008-15) and Jeremy Pruitt (2016-17), when Alabama’s defense was top three in the nation all but one season.

Instead, some will define Golding’s legacy by the breakdowns his defense had in losses, including four over the past two seasons.

Alabama’s defense gave up a 54-yard, game-winning field goal drive at Texas A&M in 2021. It allowed Georgia to score three offensive touchdowns in the final 20 minutes of the national championship game last season. After surrendering a Saban era-worst 49 points to Tennessee, the Tide let the Vols march 45 yards in 15 seconds to score a game-winning field goal. And in Baton Rouge this season, Alabama let LSU drive 75 yards for a go-ahead touchdown and then score again, with a game-winning two-point conversion, in overtime.

Yet in each of those games, Alabama had a chance to win the game with its offense and faltered.

Alabama’s offense went three-and-out before Texas A&M’s game-winning drive. The Tide missed a field goal, went three-and-out and threw two interceptions in the closing minutes against Georgia. After crossing midfield against Tennessee and with less than minute remaining during a tied game, Alabama threw three consecutive incompletions and missed a field goal. And at LSU, Alabama had the ball at the Tigers’ 28-yard line in the final minute of regulation and had three straight passes fall incomplete when a touchdown could have effectively won the game.

For fans wanting a defense to routinely extinguish opponents’ hopes as it did a decade ago, Golding’s group did not deliver. But if football has become an offensive-oriented game as Saban has contended, then it was the offense that went bust.

Of course, if an Alabama fan was asked if they would rather have a dominant defense or dominant offense, the answer would probably be, “both.” No matter how many points Alabama scores, fans will always want the opponent to score as few as possible. A shutout? Even better.

Georgia came remarkably close to meeting that ideal this season, ranking fifth in both points scored per game (41.1) and allowed (14.3). The Bulldogs dominated two top-10 offenses in Tennessee and Oregon but allowed 41 points to the nation’s second-best offense in Ohio State.

But Georgia’s offense scored 42 points, which is why it won that College Football Playoff semifinal game and advanced to trample over TCU in last week’s title game. Its 65 points would have been difficult for any opposing offense to overcome, regardless of how Smart’s defense performed.

“I really think the days of playing great defense and winning are probably, maybe, behind us,” Saban said in November 2020. “And I think that all the teams that you see win championships now are teams that can score points.”

That does not mean Alabama’s defense cannot improve in 2023. It can, and it will probably need to get better as the Tide breaks in a new starting quarterback.

But regardless of whether it was going to be Golding or someone else making the defensive play calls next season, the players on the field must execute the calls. After Alabama’s most recent loss to LSU, that was Saban’s message.

“Guys make calls, guys have to respond to the call,” he said. “If you say ‘Lucky’ the guy goes ‘Ringo,’ is that lack of communication? I mean, it’s lack of execution, aight?”

Mike Rodak is an Alabama beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @mikerodak.