With Alabama blessedly entering a much-needed bye week, the coaching staff is breaking from their usual Monday press conferences. With that, news around the Tide is sparse.
We did get our game time scheduled
for LSU week, though.
Alabama football’s matchup with LSU, the Tigers’ first game since firing former head coach Brian Kelly, will be in prime time. The game at Bryant-Denny Stadium is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 p.m. CT on Nov. 8, the SEC announced on Monday.
Both teams will have bye weeks this Saturday before meeting in Tuscaloosa. The game will be aired on ABC.
The Tigers have already canned offensive coordinator Joe Sloan along with Brian Kelly, and Alex Atkins has taken over as playcaller. Atkins was the offensive coordinator a year ago at Florida State before Gus Malzahn took over this year. Take that as you will.
At the same time, their interim head coach is a guy that’s been around a while.
While Wilson wasn’t a coordinator for the Tigers before Kelly’s firing, he makes sense to take over as the interim. That’s because, unlike defensive coordinator Blake Baker, Wilson has head coaching experience in the past.
WIlson got his first job as a head coach in 2016, when he took over at Texas-San Antonio. He coached UTSA from then until the 2019 season.
While at UTSA, he helped the Roadrunners to their first victory over a Power 5 team, knocking off Baylor in 2017. He also brought UTSA to its first-ever bowl game, a loss in the New Mexico Bowl, and was eligible again in 2017, though the Roadrunners did not receive an invite.
After he was fired at the end of the 2019 campaign, Wilson got another head coach job, this time closer to his native New Orleans. He served as McNeese’s head coach for two seasons starting in 2020, one a spring campaign impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
He resigned from McNeese in December of 2021. Wilson’s all-time record as a head coach is 26-40.
He’s a Louisiana guy through and through, has spent a lot of time with LSU, and has former head coach experience – Frank Wilson is pretty much the ideal interim candidate.
If he can get the LSU players to harness their abilities and play as a team, rather than whatever broken shambles Brian Kelly had on the field, then it could very well give the Tigers a 4-week surge to help them end the season on a high note. On the other hand, a 26-40 collegiate record as a head coach is brutal.
While we’re on the LSU train, let’s not forget who their athletic director is.
Two years ago, Texas A&M paid Jimbo Fisher more than $70 million to go away, the biggest buyout in the history of college football. On Sunday, Brian Kelly reportedly picked up the second-largest buyout ever.
Those situations had one person in common: Scott Woodward.
The LSU athletic director has a reputation of fishing for splashy hires. During his first stop at Washington, he lured Chris Petersen from Boise State. At Texas A&M, he landed the hire of the century by bringing national champion Fisher to College Station. And after taking the LSU job in 2019, he swung for the fences when he lured Brian Kelly from Notre Dame with a massive 10-year contract.
Woodward is a poster child for winning the press conference, imposing his will and handing out some of the craziest contracts ever. But now, for the second time in three years, his obsession with swinging for the fences has a major athletic department reeling. And now, with the board and even governor of Louisiana getting involved, LSU should seriously consider whether Woodward deserves the chance to make a third mistaken hire.
There’s a good chance that Woodward isn’t going to be the guy making the next hire, with LSU not having a president and the state governor seems to be wanting to push Woodward aside. If he does, though, it’ll be interesting to see if Woodward/LSU goes for another big name (Lane Kiffin Sweepstakes, anyone?) or are they willing to take a shot on more of an up and comer without the big name yet, like Alex Golesh, John Sumrall, or even Brent Key.
Anyway, here’s a fun article from Alex Scarborough poking at how Nick Saban likes having all the questions from ESPN about him returning to coaching? Will he? No… But he’s probably giving it some slight encouragement just to keep the interest going. And I liked Scarborough’s closing bit on the article, saying that the only place he could see Saban coming back to coaching for would be…. Alabama.
A FINAL WILD THOUGHT
If I close my eyes and picture Saban coaching again, there’s only one hat I can envision on top of his head. It’s made of straw and has a crimson “A” inscribed on it.
It’s Alabama.
This is a stretch of a hypothetical, but what if the NFL rang up Kalen DeBoer? We all know how thirsty they are for offensive-minded coaches who have a track record of developing quarterbacks. After what DeBoer did at Washington with Michael Penix and what we’re seeing him do at Alabama with Ty Simpson, he checks some important boxes.
Would DeBoer do it? I don’t know. Probably not. But I definitely don’t see him leaving Alabama for any college openings.
Say he does get an offer from an NFL franchise that he can’t refuse.
There would be two calls that athletic director Greg Byrne would need to make if that happened. And the first would be to Simpson to ask whether he would put his own pro prospects on hold to come back and play for the coach he idolizes, the coach who brought him to Tuscaloosa in the first place.
If the answer is yes then maybe Saban would think about saying yes, too.
He wouldn’t even have to move and he could legitimately feel as if he’d have a chance at winning a championship right away.
It was be seamless — or as seamless as it gets.
But this is all hypothetical, a stretch, a fun attempt at connecting the dots.
Saban is going to remain a University of Alabama employee and he’s going to talk about football rather than coach the game again.
In all seriousness, I do think Ryan Grubb’s spectacular failure in the NFL last year likely helps Alabama in that regard. If the Tide goes on a wins it all this year, then the Coach-Needy NFL teams will likely be looking at Grubb’s stint a year ago and it’ll introduce some hesitation about the viability of DeBoer’s scheme in the pros.
Finally, here’s a recap of the Alabama high school commits’ performances this last week. It’s mostly just stats, but one stood out to me:
Corey Howard, Defensive Line, Valdosta (Georgia)
Howard enjoyed arguably his best performance of the season this past weekend in a 48-35 win for Valdosta over Tift County. The defensive lineman finished with a season-high eight tackles, three TFL, and two sacks, while also punting one time for 62 yards.
A 6’6” 250 pound edge rusher that can also boom a 62 yard punt??? Now that’s versatility. If things don’t work out on the edge, then punting might always be an option for him.
Roll Tide!
