Kevin Steele is fine, Tommy Rees is not

Defense will keep getting better. Doesn’t matter who you’re playing; holding a team to 3 points and having turnovers is a good day on the defensive side of the ball. Once the players relax a little more, and I think they’re almost there, the defense will be fine and at the standard we’ve all come to expect. Benefit of having Steele, who is old(er) school and knows how to run the system efficiently.

However, Tommy Rees is the worst coordinator hire in Saban’s tenure. That’s including Golding, Lupoi, Nuss, BOB, and Applewhite. Pair a bad coordinator with an o-line that can’t push a baby stroller, no QB, and receivers that can’t create good separation consistently and we’ve found ourselves in the perfect storm of a bizarre offense.

I think it’s wild that Saban doesn’t let coordinators change the approach from a playbook perspective. It’s not that people can’t work for Saban, it’s that he won’t let them do everything they’ve known and done throughout their career to get them to the point of having an interview at Alabama. He has tried to keep the Kiffin/Sark offensive concept without Kiffin/Sark. Doesn’t work. Think about being offered a promotion, based on what you’ve been able to do because of your skill set, only for your new boss to ask you to change the way you do things and adopt his way of doing things instead. That’s asinine.

I’m not defending Rees there, because Notre Dame was overjoyed that he was leaving and now we see why, but it’s wild not to let people do what they know.