All the signs have Nick Saban plucking his mentor’s coaching tree for a new offensive general. Still.
Very late Wednesday night, a report from Aaron Suttles of TuscaloosaNews.com surfaced via Twitter that Brian Daboll will be Alabama’s next offensive coordinator. Two days later, both ESPN.com and al.com are reporting that the Crimson Tide will be hiring Daboll as its coordinator.
Daboll had interviewed for the job earlier this week.
A UA official told CFT earlier today that “a resolution to the coordinator question should come this weekend.”
The 41-year-old Daboll has spent the past three seasons as the tight ends coach for Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots. He’s in the midst of his second stint with the NFL club, the first coming as both a defensive assistant and wide receivers coach in 2000-06. The two years prior to that, Daboll was a graduate assistant for Saban, a former Belichick lieutenant, at Michigan State.
That was Daboll’s last job at the collegiate level as he’s spent each of the past 17 seasons in the NFL. Four of those years — Cleveland Browns (2009-10), Miami Dolphins (2011), Kansas City Chiefs (2012) — Daboll was the offensive coordinator on those NFL staffs.
Daboll would replace Steve Sarkisian, who left earlier this month to take the same job with the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons. Sarkisian had replaced Lane Kiffin after he left to become the head coach at Florida Atlantic.