Alabama OC Bill O'Brien Has Seen Success, Failure and Pain in His Coaching Journey
Alabama is a place for coaching careers to be reborn.
Got fired? No problem, come join the staff at Alabama. It’s a running joke in the college football world that the Crimson Tide staff is more of a Nick Saban coaching rehabilitation clinic.
The thing is though, the ‘clinic’ isn’t just a charity case. It has yielded ample success.
Past participants include Butch Jones (fired from Tennessee), Lane Kiffin (fired from Southern Cal), Steve Sarkisian (fired by Southern Cal), Charlie Strong (fired at South Florida). The list goes on.
Alabama might as well put up a sign in front of the Mal Moore Football Building with the famous passage from the poem, ‘The New Colossus’ -- "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...”
Assistant coaches aren’t coming to Alabama to escape a dictatorial regime, but they are seeking a better life and a fresh start.
The latest to seek refuge in Saban’s clinic is offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien. He’s been in the coaching business for almost 30 years but was recently fired as head coach of the NFL’s Houston Texans.
O’Brien was immediately snatched up by Saban to replace Sarkisian, who took advantage of his few years at Alabama and took over as head coach at Texas.
O’Brien has found success at some of his previous coaching stops – the New England Patriots (offensive coordinator), Penn State, and the Texans.
His downfall at Houston stems from bad decision making. Not on-the-field play calling, but questionable management moves.
After five winning seasons in six years at the helm with the Texans, including back-to-back division titles, O’Brien was appointed general manager in 2020. That’s when things went south.
O’Brien traded the team’s top receiver, DeAndre Hopkins, to the Arizona Cardinals for second-round draft pick David Johnson and a 2021 fourth-round pick. The move was heavily unpopular among fans and didn’t make sense to media members.
It also didn’t pay off. Houston started the 2020 season 0-4 and O’Brien was quickly shown the door after a 52-48 overall record and a 2-4 playoff mark.
Another door quickly opened for O’Brien, who started at Alabama in January.
“Alabama has proven to be a special place to play and coach,” O’Brien said earlier in the week. “I’m very grateful for the opportunity coach Saban has given me. I’ve been here seven months and I’ve already learned a ton.”
O’Brien steps into a precarious situation at Alabama. The Crimson Tide starts the season as defending national champs. The offense put up record-breaking numbers in an undefeated season and had four players taken in the first round of the NFL Draft.
The dilemma is how does O’Brien come in and not rock the boat? He’s got a first-year starting quarterback to mentor in Bryce Young, and the last thing Alabama fans want is offensive regression.
It was clear from Saban’s comments Monday at the Crimson Tide’s media day that to maintain success, everyone has to be like-minded.
“One of the first steps in us being successful is everyone has to buy in to the principles and values of the team, and the commitment and level of standard we want to achieve,” Saban said when asked about new members of the coaching staff.
“To be successful there has to be a level of commitment by everybody in the organization – coaches, players. Successful teams are successful because they have a unified level of commitment, everybody has the same goals and aspirations of what they want from the team.”
It was clear from O’Brien’s statements several minutes later he doesn’t intend to fix something that’s not broke. He’s here to learn from the best.
“To work and learn from someone like coach Saban, that’s not something that can be replicated. I'm really excited for the opportunity.”
It’s been seven years since O’Brien was a college coach, and that was just for two seasons. Those two seasons were about as difficult as any coach could handle.
O’Brien was named head coach at Penn State in 2012 after one of the biggest scandals in college football. He took over for coaching legend Joe Paterno, who was dismissed from Penn State after his failure to act properly on child sex abuse allegations of former longtime Nittany Lions assistant Jerry Sandusky.
The program was hit with NCAA sanctions, including a $60 million fine, a four-year bowl ban and scholarship reductions. Also, current players were freely allowed to transfer without penalty. Worst of all, Penn State's reputation was in the gutter. Good luck trying to find players who want to play for a team that can't compete for championships or even have a chance to win games.
"I know I have a lot of confidence in myself to lead us through what some people would say is a tough time right now," O'Brien said in his introductory press conference in 2012. "I feel like a mentally tough guy, I feel like I can do this and lead this program."
That first season, O'Brien lifted the Nittany Lions out of the void and provided stability. They went 8-4 and O’Brien was named Big Ten Coach of the Year and received the Paul "Bear" Bryant College Coach of the Year Award.
He left Penn State after two seasons to take the job with the Texans. Before Penn State he was with the New England Patriots for four years as a receivers coach, a quarterbacks coach and finally offensive coordinator in 2011.
He coached Tom Brady, perhaps the greatest quarterback to ever play in the NFL, for two seasons. O'Brien wasn’t part of any of the Patriots’ six career Super Bowl titles, but he was involved in a memorable moment with Brady.
In a game against Washington in 2011, Brady missed on a pass in the end zone, which was intercepted by a defender.
On the sideline, O’Brien lit into Brady for the bad decision. Brady yelled back, and the two got into a heated argument.
It looked like an intense exchange, but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for those who know O’Brien. Brady even helped come up with a nickname for O’Brien, whose temper always seems to boil over – Teapot.
"He kind of let me have it. I deserved it," Brady told WEEI's Kirk and Callahan show after the incident. "It was kind of a dumb throw. I deserved it. I kind of chirped back, and he didn't like it. I was kind of fiery at the time, too.
"We cooled off pretty quick. That's Billy's style. Billy's gonna let you know if he doesn't like something that you did. He handles it in the right way, in a way that you really respected. You know he's fiery, you know he just wants to get the job done. We cooled off. We ended up winning the game (when) Jerod Mayo made a great interception to end that game. By the time we got to the locker room we were good.”
O’Brien might have a few Teapot moments this season with Young, a first-year starter with a high ceiling and a wealth of talent. It’s not clear if Young can lead Alabama to another stellar season like Mac Jones did in 2020, but O’Brien is complimentary of his young protégé.
“What stands out to me about Bryce is he is very well coached in high school and well coached here,” O’Brien said. “He works very hard and he’s a good teammate. He cares about the team, and I say that about the whole quarterback room. They all understand their role and what they have to do to get better and help the team get better.”
The one thing O’Brien has to do now is be patient with Young and earn his trust.
“The quarterback position and the way it’s evolved over time, it’s really a coach on the field,” O’Brien said. “That’s the way it’s been here at Alabama. The quarterback has to be very well prepared. With all the multiplicity you see on defense, you have to adjust, you have to communicate with your teammates, and there has to be a trust developed – not only a trust of me trusting the quarterback, but the quarterback trusting our offensive staff and me that we’re putting them in the right position.”
