It’s been another impressive recruiting season for Alabama. Nick Saban and his coaching have worked their unfading magic once again signing a total of 27 players sign their letters of intent to play football for the Crimson Tide.
But just as every season brings a new crop of talented young student-athletes, it will also cause a substantial overhaul of the coaching staff. This offseason has been no different as the Tide have seen four major staffers leave the program for new opportunities.
Offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian accepted the head coaching job at Texas and brought over offensive line coach Kyle Flood and special teams coordinator and impressive recruiter Jeff Banks. Another standout recruiter for the Crimson Tide, Charles Huff, also took a head coaching job at Marshall.
At some point, one would think it would get difficult to continue to replace such talent on the staff as well as on the recruiting trail especially after coming off the season Alabama has had and the amount of talent it has lost.
To no one’s surprise, the turnover isn’t getting to Saban who seemed to have a good feeling about the new hirings the team has made and is happy for those moving on the greater opportunities.
“The other coaches that we were able to hire are great position coaches that are good recruiters, so we’re excited about the staff that we have right now,” Saban said in a Zoom conference on Wednesday. “But we also have a tremendous amount of appreciation for the job that last year’s staff did as well.
“There’ll be new energy, new enthusiasm, new ideas in terms of how we can improve what we are doing, but we’ve never reinvented the wheel here when we hired new people. We’ve just tweaked what we do to feature the players we have, and that’s what we’ll try to do with this group.”
The new enthusiasm Saban is talking about will be coming from new offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien, offensive line coach Doug Marrone, running backs coach Robert Gillespie and special teams coordinator/tight ends coach Jay Graham.
Each brings their own extensive experience to the team and a new hunger to prove themselves and compete for a national championship.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
