On Alabama’s star-studded coaching staff, Eric Kiesau was hardly a marquee name. To some, he might have best been known for being offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin’s roommate.
With their families both on the west coast, Kiffin and Kiesau roomed together, which meant “guys nights” during the designated off night for Alabama coaches (known as “date night” around the program) according to AL.com:
Kiffin’s family was in California. Kiesau’s was in Washington. So the two spent many of those Thursday nights relaxing and watching football at their home a short walk from the Tide’s team headquarters.
Aside from being a football-watching buddy and roommate to the offensive coordinator, Kiesau was also key to the Crimson Tide’s on-field strategy, specializing in the no-huddle offense:
“In 2014, Bama, they were a huddle team. But near the end of the season, they started to go with a little bit more no-huddle and using tempo,” Kiesau said. “So when the season was over, coach Saban wanted to go all-in, all no-huddle, and coach Kiffin as well. But they didn’t know the process of how to do it and what it takes to go from a huddle team, where you have long calls and a lot of long play calls, to a no-huddle team, where you have to abbreviate everything down and shorten it down.”
Kiesau has been an offensive coordinator before with Colorado (2009-10), Washington (2012-13) and Kansas (2014, interim). If he’s successful at Fresno State, the 43-year-old coach could potentially work his way back into an on-field role with a Power 5 team. He appears to be off to a good start:
“Really excited about the progress he’s been able to make, not only with our players, but with our entire offensive staff and bringing them together around a common focus of what we want to be offensively,” Fresno State coach Tim DeRuyter said. “What we’re doing is a little bit more mentally taxing on our players, but he’s made it simple. We had relatively few busts during the spring, and I was impressed with how quickly our players assimilated to our system.”
It will be interesting to see if Alabama’s no-huddle offense is affected in 2016 by Kiesau’s absence.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
