Brian Kelly and Tommy Rees shared a unique journey, first as a player-coach relationship and later as a head coach and assistant coach on the Notre Dame staff. Though Kelly left for LSU after the 2021 season, he said the two have remained close since.

“We have a great relationship that we’ve kept,” Kelly said on SEC Network on Monday at SEC Media Days per Nick Kelly with The Tuscaloosa News. He also revealed Rees consulted the head coach when approached with an offer to be Nick Saban’s OC at Alabama.

Kelly said the big question was determining if “this was the right move in his career.” The head coach felt it was but that the decision was ultimately Rees’ to make. Rees eventually made the move “because he felt like it was” the right one.

Kelly pointed to the opportunity of working with Saban and the fact that good things usually happen to assistants on Saban’s staff:

You don’t get a chance to work for Nick Saban very often. When you do, good things generally happen. Matter of fact, mostly all the time. That’s not a hard track record to look at. If you get a chance to work for Nick Saban, if you get a chance to work at a place like Alabama that has that kind of unparalleled success, this would be a great opportunity. He felt the same way, and I’m happy for him. We’ll be happy for him except for one weekend or if there’s implication of a tie or something.

Tommy Rees’ background

Rees ended his playing career at Notre Dame with 7,670 passing yards, a mark that ranks 4th all-time in Irish program history. He returned to Kelly’s program in 2017 as the QBs coach and added the title of OC in 2020.

The chance to work with Nick Saban was too much for Rees to turn down this offseason, and we’ll find out if he can indeed get the Crimson Tide offense to an elite level this fall.