Really?

If you could go back a couple weeks ago and tell Alabama fans that their 2 coordinator vacancies would be filled by Tommy Rees and Kevin Steele, that’s how the vast majority of them would’ve reacted.

Really? Like, Alabama had multi-week searches for Nick Saban’s top 2 assistants and they landed on a 30-year-old offensive coordinator with mixed fan support at his alma mater and a mid-60s defensive coordinator who already had 2 stints at Alabama? That’s the best that Saban could do?

Yes, it was. “Underwhelming” is how one could describe those hires. “Splashy,” they were not.

I know what you’re thinking, Alabama fans. Splashy is overrated. The best coordinator in Alabama history was Kirby Smart, who was an early-30s, in-house promotion after, ironically enough, Steele left to take the same job at Clemson.

A splashy coordinator hire would’ve been landing someone like Garrett Riley, who won the Broyles Award as TCU’s offensive coordinator … but also left to take the same job at Clemson. Dan Mullen or Kliff Kingsbury would’ve been splashy additions for Alabama, and on the defensive side, bringing Jeremy Pruitt back out of obscurity would’ve qualified. Shoot, even bringing the well-traveled Charlie Strong on board would’ve made waves.

None of that happened. Instead, Saban replaced his highly scrutinized coordinators with a pair of coaches who’ll already have some eyebrows raised in Tuscaloosa.

Telling? You bet. Could it also be exactly what Alabama needs to extend this decade-plus of dominance? Absolutely.

Let’s dig into the first part of that.

On the surface, one might look at poaching coordinators from Notre Dame and Miami as a sign that working for Saban is still as good of a job as there is, especially as an offensive coordinator. Jim McElwain, Lane Kiffin, Brian Daboll, Mike Locksley, Steve Sarkisian and most recently O’Brien, have all gone on to bigger jobs post-Alabama.

But I’d argue that McElwain and Sarkisian were the only coordinators who left that job on good terms. O’Brien just led a pair of top-6 offenses at Alabama, yet by the time his move back to the New England Patriots was official, he was public enemy No. 1. Between the play-calling, the high amount of too-close-for-comfort SEC games (especially on the road) and the lack of offensive discipline, you’d be hard-pressed to find any public clamoring for his return. That is, in the state of Alabama.

O’Brien was probably never going to live up to the Sarkisian standard after he led the 2 most prolific offenses in school history. And while O’Brien came to Alabama with a respected college and NFL pedigree — his NFL mistakes were in the front office — it was assumed that like the several post-Kiffin coordinators who came before him, it was his job to run the Tide’s offensive scheme while adding his tweaks. That system works for Alabama. It doesn’t always empower an up-and-coming offensive play-caller, which explains why that job in the Playoff era has almost always gone to someone looking to rebuild their career.

On the defensive side, the Smart/Pruitt standard set an understandably high bar. From 2008-17, those Alabama defenses never ranked outside of the top 7 in scoring. From 2018-22 with Pete Golding, Alabama never cracked the top 7. That wasn’t lost on Alabama fans when Golding left to join Kiffin’s staff at Ole Miss. There’s also the added element that even if one leads an elite defense, we know who’s getting the vast majority of the credit. It’s Saban. Duh.

When Steele left Alabama for Clemson to return to his home state of South Carolina after the 2008 season, he did so to have total autonomy on defense instead of having Saban and the rising Smart also in control. As long as Saban is on the Alabama sideline, one doesn’t obtain total autonomy as the Tide’s defensive coordinator. Between Golding, Tosh Lupoi and Smart, Saban’s top defensive assistant is almost always someone in their 30s. From 2009-22, Alabama had a 30-something top defensive assistant in 12 of those 14 seasons (Pruitt was in his early 40s in 2016-17). That’s not a coincidence.

Steele, who’ll turn 65 next month, will buck that trend. His 1 year at Miami saw him produce a mediocre defense amidst a 5-7 season in Year 1 under Mario Cristobal, though Steele was in good enough standing to return in 2023. He left for Alabama on his own. From 2015-20, he led 6 consecutive Power 5 defenses who ranked top 1/3 nationally, including 4 consecutive units at Auburn that finished in the top 20 from 2016-19. Mind you, that was at a program that failed to produce a top 1/3 scoring defense from 2009-15.

On one hand, that’s not usually the type of track record that Saban brings. Unlike your typical 30-something Alabama top defensive assistant, Steele clearly has some powerful people who believe in him, as we saw from the reported (but unsubstantiated) coup that was organized to become Gus Malzahn’s successor at Auburn after 2020. It wouldn’t be surprising if that cooled the market on Steele, who was the highest-paid assistant in America as recently as Jan. 22, 2020 when he signed a 3-year deal to stay as Auburn’s DC.

If there’s ever a coach who doesn’t have to worry about his status among important power brokers, it’s Saban. Perhaps that’s why that part of Steele’s history wasn’t a deal-breaker.

Clearly, Saban wanted to go in a different direction from what he had in recent memory. He went with a defensive coordinator 26 years older than his predecessor and he went with an offensive coordinator 23 years younger than his predecessor.

It’s safe to say there are some mixed feelings on Rees, who left his alma mater after 6 years on staff, 5 of which were with Brian Kelly and 2022 was his first and only under Marcus Freeman:

What does that mean? Rees is going to have to win over some people at Alabama, plenty of whom would’ve rather seen Mullen or Kingsbury on the sidelines. Last year, it was Kelly who tried to bring Rees to the SEC. But instead of following his former coach and boss to Baton Rouge, Rees opted for total offensive autonomy in South Bend.

At Alabama, Rees does have offensive autonomy. He’s also walking into a situation in which his predecessor had a declining approval rating in the midst of consecutive top-6 offenses. How much of that was because O’Brien replaced Sarkisian and how much of that was because Alabama couldn’t win a title with Bryce Young at quarterback? Probably a bit of both.

In a strange way, maybe this is a good thing that Alabama had an underwhelming OC hire. Once upon a time, Kiffin and Sarkisian came to Alabama with a whole lot of eyebrows raised. Sure, they were splashier names as former Power 5 head coaches, but they put their heads down and won over a fanbase with higher standards than anyone.

The path is there for Rees to do the same. It wasn’t long ago that there was skepticism about Kelly succeeding in a new region of the country, and some wondered if increased talent would net the same results. All Kelly did in Year 1 was beat Alabama and win the SEC West.

Rees and Steele will both be working with more talent than they’ve had at any point in their careers. And if you don’t believe that, remember that Auburn never signed a top-5 class while Steele was there while Alabama has signed nothing but top-5 classes from 2008-present. That won’t change even if Rees and Steele don’t move the needle as recruiters.

What needs to change is Alabama having the right people to maximize that talent. Making a couple of underwhelming hires in the first week of February usually isn’t the preamble for an offseason of buzz.

Then again … so what? Of Alabama’s 6 titles under Saban, 5 of them came when they weren’t preseason No. 1 in the AP Poll. Saban’s goal with filling these vacancies was never about winning the news cycle. At Alabama, that only takes you so far. The multi-week searches suggest that neither Steele nor Rees were Saban’s first choices. If 2023 is another Playoff-less season, we’ll get more reminders of that.

Now would be a good time for Rees and Steele to be overwhelmingly good at their jobs.

Really.