someone a few years back on b1g board was comparing saban and kelly (oregon) and had an interesting take.
they put it on a scale of chaos.
on one side, you want to limit chaos, control everything. run game, defense, los, mistakes, turnovers, efficient offense, clock, everything. problem is chaos will happen. you need to account for that with the best possible players to overcome that. this is obviously saban's approach. and he's mastered it.
on the other side, you want to invite chaos. explosion, up and down field, throwing left and right, scoring quick and often, make the ball bounce, etc. mistake will happen, but so will a ton of big plays. it's ok if something goes wrong, we'' be back out to try again in no time. and if you can be the one instigating the chaos, you can feed from it, build it, until the other team breaks from it. high octane, fast pace and the other hunh teams lean this way, with kelly being best at it at that time.
wish i could go back and get that. they put it much more eloquently than i did.
as far as x's and o's, i generally think almost all hc's are pretty good at that. otherwise they wouldn't have made it up the coaching ranks to be a coord, much less a hc.