Alabama Coach Agree To Leave Due To Making No Effort For The Team…

Alabama football has a large group of freshman early enrollees going through spring football practice with the team at the moment.

Red Morgan has received praise from Alabama football’s coaches and players throughout the spring. Morgan signed with the Crimson Tide as a four-star defensive back prospect, who closed on the football with heat-seeking speed and played a lot bigger than his listed height and weight. Kalen DeBoer mentioned Morgan has been one of the highlights of the Tide’s freshmen class this spring. Alabama lost several members of its secondary after the 2023 football season, and Morgan looks to have worked himself into position to make an impact in year one with the many departures.

Odom has transitioned into a wide receiver for the Crimson Tide after being recruited as a tight end. While being considered as a tight end prospect, Odom was featured more so as a receiver for Carrollton during his time with the Trojans. He has received praise from multiple Alabama receivers, including Kendrick Law, who compared the 6-foot-5 freshman to George Pickens.

Brown is impressing with his advanced coverage technique. This is no surprise considering how he looked on film for Mater Dei. The California product has what many call ‘teach tape’ as he performed like a polished college defensive back at the high school level. DeBoer has spoken positively about him and Morgan.

It has been a few weeks since the first part of our coverage of the new Alabama Football coaches — life comes at you fast with SEC Tournament play, a Final Four run, and a brief-but-terrifying job search at Kentucky.

But, we’re back, and A-Day is this Saturday, so let’s put a bow on the rest of the Assistants. If you missed our story on KDB and the new coordinators, you can find that link below.

As you look at the new assistant coaches, something immediately jumps out at you: their youth, and their diversity.

No, we’re not talking some smooth-brained HR checkbox nonsense, where people are reduced to something as superficial as their skin color — and Saban was notoriously scrupulous on issues of race in any event. We mean diversity in its truest, most important sense: diversity of experience, of geographic reach, of coaching philosophy. (Because, quite literally the single most boring thing about anyone is their skin color, their genitals, or what they do with either of those things.*)

But, if you want to say “diversity” in the Twitter sense? If that is the sort of lame thing that floats your boat, they are remarkably diverse, with half the staff being minorities, with a coaching age spanning everywhere from elderly Gen X to Zillennial, and with playing and coaching experiences ranging from NAIA to the Power 5 and everywhere in between.

And, like so many in this program, most of these new faces are defined by being on the uptick of their career. Two of the new guys even quit head coaching jobs to come to Tuscaloosa, and both are under 40 years old.

So, if any staff can reach out to a younger player contingent from across the country — a skill Coach Saban said he was losing — it would be this one.

The youth movement is afoot. Let’s find out how.

The Defensive Slash Guys

Hard to know what to call these guys. We’ll start with Freddie Roach, the long-time Defensive Line Coach and ‘Bama alum has been a linchpin of Alabama’s recruiting success, especially in the front seven. If there was any one recruiter it was incumbent for the new staff to keep on defense, it was Roach. Though results on the field have ranged from outstanding to inconsistent, the common denominator is talent. When the Tide has talent (as in 2021,) he has put out some stellar line groups that particularly excel at run-stuffing. When he doesn’t then we get some inconsistent play, and particularly right in the heart of the interior.

The transition to a 4-2-5 won’t be particularly taxing for Roach. He coached a hybrid scheme like this at Ole Miss, and that nickel look was the Pete Golding preferred base set with a twist (indeed, it is what Pete brought over from UTSA). While Roach did not earn the DC job under the new regime, he was promoted to Associate Head Coach, which require far more administrative and program-building demands than a simple coordinator role. It is almost certain that we are living on borrowed time, though. Coach Roach will get promoted to a DC role at a major program (perhaps even this one!) or snap up a head coaching role at a smaller G5 program sooner rather than later. Should KDB fall ill or miss a game, on paper at least, Roach is the next man up.

We discussed Kane Wommack previously, and it is his defense. But on paper, there is a co-defensive coordinator: Like Kane Wommack, Buffalo head coach Maurice Linguist left his own program to take a co-coordinator job with the Tide: Co-Defensive Coordinator — I’m not sure how DeBoer is is doing it, but talking two guys out of their own HC jobs into subordinate roles is some mastercrafted salesmanship.

Like Roach, he’s young, and has major CFB playing experience (Baylor, under Guy Morriss). And, like other hires, Coach Mo (and that’s what I’m calling him…Linguist is as hard to type as DeBoer), was selected almost certainly with his geographic ties to a talent-rich area of the country. In Coach Mo’s case, that is Texas. Linguist is a Lone Star native, played in Texas, and coached at both the college and pro level in Texas. His pro experience is a good sell to recruits, given how many DBs the speed state produces. He also has significant SEC experience, with stints at both Clanga and Aggie. His work at A&M was particularly great. Aggie led the nation in YPA in 2019, and was 7th in passing defense in 2018. His zone-friendly background is a great fit for this new system, with its special emphasis on limiting YAC.

At Buffalo, the results speak for themselves. He inherited a group that was 111th in pass defense, and by the end of his third year, had jumped all the way to 40th — not too bad for one of the hardest jobs in the country, with some its the least talent, eh?

With his HC experience, alongside Kane and Roach and Shepard, he joins a group of four second-in-command / slash-type guys that will help the new regime hit the ground running…with both feet.

Offensive Staff

Robert Gillespie returns as Running Back Coach, one of the few holdovers of the Saban regime. Like Roach, he is a crucial part of the Tide’s recruiting strategy, though on the offensive side of the ball. Perhaps Coach G’s best work to date was in bringing along Brian Robinson into an all-SEC caliber player. From forgotten man on the depth chart, to Washington Commander starting RB, the steady B Rob was coached to work with his more limited skillset — hands and toughness.

If there has been any criticism on this front, is in establishing a rotation and getting the best player on field. No one seriously though Justice Haynes was the 4th best back on this team, surely? That is obviously confounded by the two-headed Nick Saban preference for seniority on one hand, and ability to block in the passing game in the other. If you were limited in the latter, it was very hard to see the field under the Goat.

We shall see if KDB gives CRG some license to rotate freely depending on the demands of the game and who’s in a rhythm. That was one of Coach Burns’ best skills, and one we’ve been missing lately. He seemingly always knew who had the hot hand and how to ride it.

As for the recruiting niche? You guessed it: Florida.

Bryan Ellis joins the staff as Tight Ends Coach from the absolutely lethal Clay Helton offense over at Georgia Southern that shattered Sun Belt passing records the past two seasons. That ought not be a surprise, either. He was also a Brohm protege and was on the staff with Coach Shepard at Western Kentucky, as the Co-OC with him. He’s coached a little bit of everything at the offensive skills positions from running backs to passing game OC to wideouts. At WKU, he helped oversee a group of five tight ends who went from Hilltopper to NFL players: Doyle, Higbee, Fant, Yelder and the late Mitchell Henry.

At just 35, he’s not only young, he’s practically a babe in arms in coaching terms. He already has a coaching track record of putting guys in the league. And, yes, he also fills a very specific recruiting niche in a target-rich environment: This time, Georgia.

New OLC Chris Kapilovic has a very interesting resume. First are the proven results, producing Joe Moore finalists and first round OL picks across the country. He has been an offensive coordinator, a passing game coordinator, and an offensive line coach, in a variety of offenses: from Fedora’s uptempo pass-first UNC to manball and pro sets under Mel Tucker. Perhaps fittingly, this is the long-sticker on the staff — over 30 years as a coach. And really, you don’t want youth at that spot. You want a track record. Coach Kap brings that steady record with him, and also happens to have a nice flair for offensive game-planning in run or pass schemes. This is precisely the kind of hire the Tide needed in a new regime. He’s going to love the Tide’s interior line.

Kapolivic’s recruiting track record is a bit thinner — he’s an X and O, hands-on, old school sort of coach — but he has brought in five blue-chip targets, two of which are now in the NFL. And yes, he also has a very specific recruiting niche in another area rife with talent: The Carolinas. There is a metric ton of talent between Rock Hill and Greensboro that is simply wasted on trash ACC teams. This is meant to correct that.

Finally, the man many thought ought to be promoted to Offensive Coordinator after Ryan Grubb decided he wanted to enjoy the needle alleys, tent cities, and trust fund anarchists in Seattle — JaMarcus Shepard. Shepard gets three job titles. Assistant Head Coach, Wide Receiver Coach, and Co-Offensive Coordinator, and he is yet another coach under 40 with a promising track record.

Shepard probably has the best CV of any of the skills position coaches. And if you love a forward pass, do I have the man for you. Like Coach KDB, Shepard’s playing experience and entry into coaching came from the POV of a wide receiver, and his acceleration up the coaching ranks has been steady, progressive, and marked by success at every stop. He comes to Alabama via Washington, where he was the Passing Game Coordinator for the Huskies under KDB. Those results speak for themselves. He led an IU Quarterback to an All-American campaign and the Heisman finalist dinner. UW was 4th in the country in 2022 in air-yards per throw, and first last season.

The passing offense may look dink-and-dunk on the surface, but it stretches the field quite a lot. That’s not just the KDB system, that’s an artifact of coaching under Brohm at Western Kentucky and Purdue. Like KDB, Brohm’s scheme uses all 53 yards of the horizontal axis, taking short shots and using the passing game to move the chains with quick throws, followed up by ruthless killshots that stretch the field and free up those shorter routes (as well as freeze the back seven on some beloved draws and screens — remember those!) At Purdue as PGC and OC, his passing offenses were never ranked lower than 16th, and led the Big 10 in three of four seasons through the air.

One of the interesting things is, like the old run and shoot, this offense is schemed from the POV of the wideouts…and the coaching staff reflects that. It will also put a serious premium on accuracy, efficiency, and quick-reads — where the wideouts and QBs have to all be on the same page, on the same routes, and read the same DB keys. Perhaps that is why Ty Simpson is having such a good Spring?