Alabama Football Endures Rapid Offensive Coordinator Coaching Carousel

If your favorite college team had three offensive coordinators in the span of five weeks, you’d be panicking. Because the team that fits that description happens to be Alabama, it’s even more confusing.

The Crimson tide hired Brian Daboll to be its latest offensive coordinator on Saturday, replacing Steve Sarkisian, who had the role for exactly one game - the national title loss to Clemson last month - before jumping ship to the Atlanta Falcons following their Super Bowl collapse against the New England Patriots two weeks ago.

Take a deep breath...got all that?

It’s a weird game of musical chairs at a program that has made itself into the premiere organization in ncaa college football over the past 10 years. It also seems like part of a larger problem, as this makes five offensive coordinators for the Tide since Jim McElwain left after the 2011 season.

So why so much turnover? Is it because the job makes you an instant candidate for every other good job out there? Is it because working with/for Nick Saban is a nightmare? The real reason might be that even though it doesn’t really seem like it, the rest of the country is starting to catch up with the Crimson Tide, and Alabama can no longer simply field the greatest defense in the country every year and run the ball 45 times a game and expect to win.

Consider Alabama’s four national title wins between 2009-2012.The Tide outscored the second-best team in the country by a combined total of 98-45. The real signature game of that era was the 21-0 triumph over LSU in 2011. The game was played in the Tigers’ backyard - the Superdome - and they couldn’t move the ball five feet without Alabama sending six guys in for a gang tackle. That ability has gone by the wayside in the Tide’s last two title game appearances: their 45-40 win over Clemson a year ago and their 35-31 loss in January.

Here’s a look at what Alabama’s offensive coordinators have done since 2012:

Doug Nussmeier (2012-2013): Nussmeier left the same job at Washington to come to Alabama after McElwain departed. In 2012, the Crimson Tide went 13-1 and won the national title by blowing out Notre Dame 42-14. Under Nussmeier, A.J. McCarron was ranked first in the country in pass efficiency and the team finished 12th in scoring offense. They scored at least 30 points in all but two games: A 21-17 win over LSU and a 29-24 loss at home to Texas A&M. In 2013, the Tide went 11-2 but was upset by Auburn to lose the SEC West title. The offense dropped to 17th in the country in scoring although McCarron won the Maxwell Award. The year ended with a 45-31 blowout loss to Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl.

Lane Kiffin (2014-2016): Everyone’s favorite knucklehead from Tennessee and USC appeared on Saban’s doorstep in 2014 with lots of raised eyebrows. But despite missing the bus a few times, Kiffin was able to avoid the limelight and put together some nice offenses for the Tide. In 2014, the Tide went 12-2 and were defeated in the college playoff semifinals 42-35 by Ohio State. The offense struggled on several occasions, averaging just 19 points per game during a four-game stretch against Ole Miss, Arkansas, LSU, and Mississippi State. Kiffin’s second campaign saw the offense greatly improved and another national championship won. The Tide failed to score at least 29 points just twice - and won both games regardless. In their two College Football playoff games, they racked up 83 points.  It was more of the same in 2016, as Alabama scored at least 30 points in every regular-season game except a 10-0 win over LSU. They put up 54 points on Florida in the SEC title game and beat Washington 24-7 in the semifinals, Kiffin’s last game before ducking out to South Florida.

Steve Sarkisian (2017): One game was all the Tide got out of Sarkisian, the former BYU quarterback. His team scored 31 points and lost. Considering that it was only 15 months ago that Sarkisian was being fired from USC for his inability to stay sober basically anywhere and you really have to speculate what he was doing coaching at the national title game. He took the job on January 2, 2017, and left it on February 7, 2017, to become the OC for the Atlanta Falcons. He has the shelf life of a Kim Kardashian wedding.

Brian Daboll (2017?): I guess about the only thing Daboll could do to one-up Kiffin and Sarkisian at this point would be to show up to work his first day at Alabama and quit. He beat out Houston Texans’ offensive coordinator George Godsey for the job. Godsey got fired for the Texans for his role in the Brock Osweiler experiment.