Alabama football fans no longer have Pete Golding as a defensive coordinator.
He moved on to Ole Miss and Lane Kiffin, freeing Nick Saban to find a coach to return the Crimson Tide’s defense to dominance.
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Golding, 37, helped Alabama to three Southeastern Conference Championships (2018, 2020-21) and a College Football Playoff National Championship in 2020, but his style did not result in the Tide having the respect factor on defense. Marvin Constant, a former All-SEC linebacker and 1999 SEC Champion at Alabama, gave a final assessment of Golding in Tuesday’s episode of The Bama Standard. Constant never saw Golding as a coach that players feared and wanted to run through a brick wall for.
“When I first heard the news that Pete was leaving, the music from the Wizard of Oz started playing in my head,” Constant said about Golding. “When they started saying ‘the wicked witch is dead’ and the munchkins got excited, that’s how I felt. I am like ‘we have a chance to get a real coach again.’ The excitement was real. The reality of it is how many careers did he ruin? How much money did he cost a lot of these young men? If we had the No. 1 class for a decade, we should have had multiple guys going in the first round of the last three NFL Drafts on defense. That has not been the reality. So, how many of these kids’ futures did he piss down the toilet with his lack of coaching? I am going to call it what it is. They were often confused, out of place, physicality was not there, and they were dominated. When NFL scouts turned on that tape, it was not good. I have several friends who coach and scout in the NFL, and from them, Alabama’s film was not good. I just hate it for all those young men because he cost them money.”
Constant said he is adamant about Alabama getting a ‘real defensive coordinator.’
“These players need a coach that is going to give them what they need to be successful,” he said. “They have not been getting that in the last three to four years with Pete Golding. I am extremely excited that he’s gone.”
Alabama has four names it has targeted to replace Golding. Glenn Schumann, Jim Leonhard, Jeremy Pruitt, and Jimmy Lake are worthy candidates, but we will see who Nick Saban selects.
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Stephen M. Smith is the managing editor and senior writer for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can “like” him on Facebook or “follow” him on Twitter, via @CoachingMSmith.
