Hours after Jay Graham announced he was stepping away from his job as Alabama tight ends coach and special teams coordinator to focus on mental health, Nick Saban commented on his assistant’s departure.

“Jay made a decision to do what he did, and we’re gonna support him every way that we can,” Saban said in his Wednesday press conference. “We certainly wish him and his family the very best.”

Saban acknowledged that spring practice is not the ideal time to try to fill a staff opening. He shared that in the short term one staffer has been promoted to an on-field role. As for the full-time replacement, Saban wasn’t able to offer up a timeline.

“Obviously our plan is to improvise and adjust,” Saban said. “I think we have other people that can help us coach special teams. Todd Watson, who was an assistant intern doing special teams, we just activated him to do it for now, and we’ll start a search and see if we can find the best coach. There’s no timetable for doing that. We wanna really try to get the best person we can get. It’s not an ideal time, lots of people in spring practice, so we’ll just have to see how it goes and how that process ends up. We just started that a little bit today.”