Tommy Rees broke mold for Nick Saban’s offensive coordinators at Alabama
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PASADENA, Calif. — About the only thing Nick Saban has had more of than national championships at Alabama is offensive coordinators.
As Saban stares down what could be his seventh national title with the Crimson Tide, he does so with his seventh offensive coordinator in the past 11 years and his ninth overall. Remarkably, Saban has won national titles with five different offensive coordinators.
Enter the new kid on the block, 31-year-old ex-Notre Dame quarterback Tommy Rees, whose hiring in February might have raised a few eyebrows because of his age and lack of ties to Saban and the SEC. But now, with Alabama going from debilitated to dynamic offensively on its way to 11 straight wins and a showdown with Michigan in Monday’s College Football Playoff semifinal at the Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential (5 p.m. ET, ESPN), any eyebrows being raised are the result of the job Rees has done in his first season at Alabama.
“I think back to where we were, all the questions about our quarterbacks, whether we were good enough and what our identity was on offense, and you’ve got to give Coach Rees a lot of credit for pushing the right buttons with everybody, not just me,” said Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe, who went from being benched in Week 3 to finishing sixth in the Heisman Trophy voting.
“He was in the middle of that storm with us and led us out of it. I’m not saying it was easy, but you never saw any panic or anything that made you feel like he didn’t have the answers to get us where we are right now.”
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It’s no secret that calling plays for Saban on offense isn’t for everybody, and it’s certainly not for the weak at heart. But when Saban went searching for his new OC last year, he eventually found his way to Rees, who wasn’t necessarily Saban’s first choice. Washington’s Ryan Grubb flew to campus to interview in late January, but the Huskies’ OC decided to stay in Seattle. There were others, too, as Saban routinely casts a wide net when talking to candidates.
But once Saban sat down and interviewed Rees, the search was over.
“What you noticed right away was how bright he was, how prepared he was, and then you saw how good he was with the players and the way he went about teaching the players,” Saban said. “You’ve seen that play out on the field this year.
“He’s transformed our offense. I think he’s one of the best coaches in college football.”
Rees was a shift from past Saban offensive coordinator hires. His previous five offensive coordinators — Bill O’Brien, Steve Sarkisian, Mike Locksley, Brian Daboll and Lane Kiffin — all had previously been either NFL or FBS head coaches or, in Daboll’s case, an NFL offensive coordinator. Daboll is now the New York Giants’ head coach.
And although it’s never been a prerequisite for Saban, he didn’t have any real ties to Rees other than knowing his father, Bill, who coached at UCLA and worked in the NFL in various scouting and personnel roles. But with Rees, Saban saw a bit of himself at a younger age and wasn’t as concerned about bringing in someone who had previously called plays or worked in the SEC.
“One of the things I liked about Tommy is that he had played quarterback and had also coached quarterbacks, and I knew that was a position that was unsettled for us going into the season,” Saban said. “The other thing was that he believed in running the football and being physical, all the things that have been at the core of what we’ve always done here.”
Rees was flattered that “one of the best coaches to ever do it” would even be interested in him. But he wasn’t star-struck and certainly wasn’t lacking in confidence or presence. He had a chance to follow Brian Kelly to LSU after the 2021 season but chose to stay put at Notre Dame under Marcus Freeman. But when Saban called, Rees knew it was an opportunity he couldn’t turn down.
“You remind yourself that this is unbelievable, the learning experience and the growth you’re having while also being present in the moment of going after success and finding ways to be effective on the field,” Rees said.
In other words, winning and winning now.
Saban doesn’t hire coordinators he thinks need training wheels, and that certainly wasn’t the case with the Crimson Tide coming off a season in which they missed the playoff for only the second time since its advent in 2014.
“I know people pointed to Tommy’s age, but he grew up in a coaching family. He was the quarterback at Notre Dame. He coached at Notre Dame, so it’s not like he’s been in jobs that nobody paid attention to,” said Alabama defensive coordinator Kevin Steele, who has worked under Saban for three separate stints.
“He’s been around pressure before, and he never flinched this season. Never.”
Rees’ lack of ego and his eagerness to get to know everybody in the football complex, from the defensive coaches to student workers to the janitors, was a big hit with everybody in the program. Another thing that resonated, despite Rees being less than 10 years older than some of his players, was that he was seasoned and mature enough to know how to handle Saban.
It’s Saban’s offense, and always will be, but the 72-year-old coach has shown an uncanny ability to evolve as the game has changed and allow his playcallers to put their stamp on the group. Through the transition, Rees was able to get his point across and take Saban’s direction — no matter how brutally honest that “direction” was — and not let it faze him.
As one staff member said, “Tommy does a really good job of hearing the message and not necessarily the delivery, and a lot of guys crumble under that.”
For Rees, it was all about conviction.
“To have the ability to say, ‘This is why we want to do certain things,’ I mean, you’ve got to have confidence. You’ve got to have thick skin, all that,” Rees said. “But I think conviction is really important with Coach Saban when you present what you want to do offensively.”
Those who know Rees best aren’t the least bit surprised that he’s been such a good fit at Alabama. In fact, they said he’s almost a younger version of Saban in that his competitive fire never allows him to be satisfied.
“He wants to win so badly,” said Jack Coan, who played quarterback at Notre Dame under Rees in 2021 and now plays in the XFL for the San Antonio Brahmas. “He’s so competitive and he takes everything personal, whether it’s going against the defense in practice or going against a defensive coordinator on a different team.
“He doesn’t just want to win. He wants to truly dominate those guys and take it to them every time. Nobody is more psychotic than him when it comes to game-planning, going over every detail in meticulous fashion and wanting to win.”
If that sounds familiar, it should. It mirrors Saban’s ethos since he was playing quarterback at Monongah High in a small coal-mining town in West Virginia in the late 1960s.
Saban said Rees’ toughness has been reflected in the way Alabama has repeatedly delivered in clutch situations on offense this season and the way that unit stuck together and never wavered despite a Week 2 loss to Texas and an ugly performance a week later in a 17-3 win over South Florida that saw the Tide complete just 10 passes for 107 yards.
Among fans and the media, there were mounting doubts about Rees at that point, and it would have been easy for doubt — and even some division — to creep within the program, especially with all the quarterback uncertainty and Rees being in his first year.
“But Tommy never allowed that to happen,” Saban said. “He never wavered, stayed committed to his convictions in the things we needed to do, but he was flexible. He wasn’t inflexible in saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got to do it just this way.'”
Rees showed that same resolve as a player at Notre Dame. He passed for 2,871 yards and 20 touchdowns as a sophomore in 2011, but also threw 14 interceptions and was tagged with the nickname “Tommy Turnover” by some fans. Rees was suspended for the first game of the 2012 season by Kelly after an alcohol-related arrest at an off-campus party. Rees played in all 11 games that season but started only two.
In the second game that season, starting quarterback Everett Golson was injured. Boos rang out when Rees entered, but he ended up saving the Irish that day by leading a game-winning drive. He also came off the bench to lead Notre Dame to wins over Michigan and Stanford, spearheading the Irish’s path to the BCS national championship game, where they were routed by Saban and Alabama.
“He’s equipped to handle those situations, the bad moments, the ups and the downs, but that’s how he’s always been, always even-keeled and always confident no matter what’s going on around him,” said Miami (Ohio) coach Chuck Martin, who was Rees’ offensive coordinator at Notre Dame.
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After Rees lost the QB job in 2012, Martin said, there was no pouting, even though, Martin added, Rees never really had a chance to compete for it.
“But he handled it. Yeah, he was frustrated, he was upset, he was pissed, which he deserved to be all those things,” Martin said. “But then he handled it. He figured out, ‘OK, this is where I’m at, and how do I make the most of it?’ It’s a gift because he’s always been able to sort things out, have a plan and move forward the best way possible, and he’s the same way as a coach.
“As I’ve said, the game’s always been easy for him.”
There was nothing easy about sorting out Alabama’s offensive doldrums to start this season. The Tide went through spring practice and had no idea who their starting quarterback was going to be. Rees wasn’t sold on Milroe or Ty Simpson, prompting the Tide to bring in one of Rees’ former quarterbacks at Notre Dame, Tyler Buchner, via the transfer portal after spring practice.
The quarterbacks were still sharing repetitions in practice going into the Texas game in Week 2, and there were other issues on offense that couldn’t be pinned just on the quarterbacks. Alabama was struggling with penalties and managed just 107 rushing yards against Texas, 131 against Ole Miss and 23 against Texas A&M over the first six weeks of the season.
But once it became clear to everybody on the staff that Milroe was the guy at quarterback, Rees zeroed in on tailoring the offense to Milroe’s strengths.
“It was like we went on our first date, to being together for a month and then it was like we’d been dating for years,” Milroe said, laughing. “He got to know me, and I got to know him. The thing that helped me as much as anything was having a coach who played quarterback. I’d never had that before. He’d been there. He knew that you were going to make mistakes and knew that you had to have the freedom to bounce back from those mistakes and keep playing.”
As much as anything, Rees said his focus was to make sure Milroe was comfortable and playing instinctively.
“The other thing, once we made a decision, everybody was going to be together on it and saying, ‘This is what we’re doing,'” Rees said.
“There was no other opinion.”
While watching the transformation of the Alabama offense, Coan, who keeps in touch with Rees, recalled something Rees told the quarterbacks at Notre Dame. Rees shared with them that he almost felt more pressure as a playcaller than he did as a quarterback.
“It’s because he didn’t want to mess it up for the players, and you respect that so much when you’re playing for somebody like that,” said Coan, who started his career at Wisconsin before transferring to Notre Dame. “Coaches can get stuck in their ways, but not [Rees]. He doesn’t have a cookie-cutter way to coach his players.
“He just knows how to get the best out of them.”