Alabama football: Todd Grantham a realistic DC option for Nick Saban
Happy Tuesday everyone. The men’s basketball team will look to bounce back from Saturday’s shelling in Norman as they host Vanderbilt. Nate Oats spoke to reporters yesterday and said the team had been skating for some time without playing their best.
“I think we played badly and got away with it before that,” Oats said. “Teams missed shots against us or sometimes missed free throws. It was a game where Oklahoma was locked in and they needed a bad win.
Alabama, meanwhile, had no fire in its collective belly for the SEC/Big 12 Challenge.
“So yeah, if you’re not going to play with a sense of urgency and you’re not going to play hard, you have to lose the game,” Oats said. “The point needs to be made, you can’t get away with it.”
In the end, Oklahoma brought it to them in a hostile environment and they didn’t react well. Hopefully they can grow from the experience and reach their vast potential in March. Tip is at 7:30 a.m. CT on the SEC Network, and of course we’ll have coverage later.
In football news, everyone wants to talk about who Saban will hire his assistants, so I think we will. Dennis Dodd has #sauces telling him that Saban would love to have Jeremy Pruitt but that’s unlikely to happen.
Alabama coach Nick Saban has contacted former Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt regarding Crimson Tide’s vacant defensive coordinator position, sources tell CBS Sports. No offers are believed to have been made at this time, and Alabama would not speak to Pruitt’s candidacy when contacted for comment.
Sources say Pruitt has a high chance of being hired by the Tide as the subject of an ongoing NCAA investigation. He was fired in Tennessee two years ago as the NCAA charged the Volunteers with 18 Level I violations. Level I violations are the most serious on the NCAA’s offense scale.
So if that’s not Pruitt, then who could it be?
Georgia co-defensive coordinator Glenn Schumann was seen as the main alternative to Pruitt last week. However, sources have since told Tide Illustrated that Bulldogs head coach Kirby Smart is now confident in his ability to keep Schumann in Athens.
Also, there doesn’t seem to be any progress with Alabama and other supposed candidates, including Jimmy Lake or Jim Leonhard.
That seems to leave Grantham as the likeliest alternative at the moment. The 56-year-old assistant joined the Alabama team as a defensive analyst last summer after spending the previous four seasons as Florida’s defensive coordinator.
No idea how reliable Tony’s #sauces are, but Grantham is 56, has over 30 years of experience in the coaching game, got his first DC job in 2005, coordinated in both college and in the NFL, and especially worked for Saban at Michigan State, then as an analyst last season. As a coordinator, his defenses have had good and bad seasons. If he’s a guy Saban feels comfortable hiring, then he’ll be fine, even if the complainers keep complaining.
Saban spoke with Washington OC Ryan Grubb about this opening.
Grubb, 47, spent last season leading the Huskies offense while serving as quarterbacks coach. The Iowa native has coached at the FBS level since 2014 but never in the SEC and has no direct connection to Saban or his coaching tree.
Washington raised Grubb’s salary twice late in 2022, including a second raise in December that would net him $2 million a year through 2025, according to the Seattle Times. That put Grubb among the highest paid assistants in college football and significantly higher than Bill O’Brien, who earned $1.1 million over the past two seasons for Alabama.
It will be interesting to see if that happens. From Grubb’s perspective, he could show he can call an offense without head coach Kalen KeBoer’s watchful eye on him, as he has for most of his career.
Much of the credit went to Grubb, and that credit is probably deserved. But Grubb’s departure might answer a question: Was the offense the brainchild of head coach Kalen DeBoer?
It’s always difficult trying to figure out who the real guru is when an OC is coaching under their offensive-oriented boss. DeBoer was offensive coordinator in southern Illinois, eastern Michigan and Indiana before landing the HC job at Fresno State – where the Bulldogs produced a top-15 offense in Kalen’s sophomore year. .
This hire would be somewhat of a departure for Saban as it seems rather impossible that he would have much familiarity with Grubb. He will no doubt do his due diligence, and if he feels comfortable with him, then it’s Grubb.
Finally, Roman Harper shared the DeVonta Smith interview that I embedded yesterday with a quick swipe at David Pollack, who told Nick Saban during the national championship game that Georgia “took on college football.”
Georgia is going nowhere, and neither is Alabama. These two will be feuding for the foreseeable future.
It’s all for now. Have a nice day.
Rolling tide.