When news first broke regarding Alabama’s new coaching staff hires over the offseason a few questions were raised about a few members of the team’s current staff.
Coleman Hutzler, who was hired away from Ole Miss, was confirmed on Wednesday to become the team’s new special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach. Last season Drew Svoboda served as the special team’s coordinator but in 2022 he will only be coaching the tight ends. What was less clear was what was going to happen to Alabama veteran staffer Sal Sunseri who was coaching the team’s outside linebackers.
On Wednesday during a Zoom conference, Nick Saban revealed what the plan is for Sunseri moving forward at Alabama.
“Sal is going to be a special assistant to the head coach,” Saban said. “I think there’s a lot of things going on in college football, the landscape has changed dramatically. You guys all know that. Whether it’s the portal, having people on top of the portal, you almost need a staff of people just like you have a staff of people for recruiting to find out who the best players in high schools are. You also have to have people responsible to do evaluations in terms of who’s getting in the portal, and also tracking how guys that get in the portal actually do.
“I think it’s a little bit of a fad right now to think that I get in the portal and all my issues and problems are gonna be solved. But yet it’d be interesting to see how many people really benefit in a positive way from taking advantage of the opportunity to get in the portal, and we’re gonna track those kinds of things and Sal’s gonna be involved in a lot of those things. But he’s gonna be a special assistant to me, aight, to help me in a lot of ways in the changing landscape of college football.”
Sunseri first began his career at Alabama from 2009-11 where he coached the linebackers for two national championship teams. He would then have stints at Tennessee (2012), Florida State (2013-14), the Oakland Raiders (2015-17) and Florida (2018) before rejoining the Crimson Tide in 2019.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
