“The main thing is not turning the ball over,” said Jake Coker, the quarterback on the most recent Alabama championship team, which won after the 2015 season. “But also making the right decisions.”

Saban is “not looking for someone to take over the game, really at any position,” Coker added.

Few expect the current starter, the sophomore Jalen Hurts, to alter the track record of recent Alabama quarterbacks. Coker recently retired from football; AJ McCarron, who led championship teams in the 2011 and 2012 seasons, has started three games in his N.F.L. career; and Greg McElroy, quarterback of the 2009 Crimson Tide team, is an SEC Network analyst.

Critics worry that Alabama’s offense does not test Hurts as the N.F.L. might and lets him rely on his legs. While Hurts’s mobility sets him apart from those previous signal-callers, he is in other important respects a classic Saban quarterback.

The Saban philosophy of quarterbacking can be summarized as: Don’t screw up. For Saban, who was an N.F.L. defensive coordinator under Patriots Coach Bill Belichick and coached the Miami Dolphins for two seasons, the quarterback’s main goals are to get the ball to talented backs and receivers, avoid big errors and let his typically top-ranked defenses do the rest.