Alabama Director of Sports Science Matt Rhea to Join New Orleans Saints

UPDATE (March 1): Matt Rhea posted a farewell tweet, confirming his departure from Alabama football.

Love my Alabama guys and grateful to Coach Saban for the experience. They won’t even notice I’m gone but what an experience for me! Looking ahead to new challenges but I’ll be cheering for @AlabamaFTBL this fall. #RollTide
— Matt Rhea, PhD (@MattRheaPhD) March 1, 2022

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Alabama’s strength-and-conditioning duo appears to be splitting up. According to a report from 247Sports’ Josh Pate, Alabama director of sports science, Matt Rhea, is moving to the NFL where he will join the New Orleans Saints.

Alabama director of sports performance, David Ballou, is expected to remain with the Crimson Tide. Alabama hired Ballou and Rhea from Indiana to spearhead its new sports-science approach to conditioning in March of 2020.

Before spending the past two seasons together at Alabama, Ballou and Rhea worked together at Indiana during the 2018-19 seasons. The two also spent a year together at IMG Academy in 2016.

Rhea has worked as a football strength and conditioning coach for more than a decade, including five years with NFL Combine training. He launched a consulting company in 2001 and helped NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL teams, International Olympic programs and college athletic departments, providing direction to his clients in areas such as speed training, injury prevention and performance optimization.

Rhea advanced to a full professor of kinesiology at A.T. Still University where he taught courses in sports conditioning and exercise physiology. He has published nearly 100 studies in sports performance enhancement, as well as lecturing in seven different countries.

Rhea implemented a scientific approach to Alabama’s training, working to help players avoid soft-muscle injuries. His methods coincided with the Crimson Tide’s new Sports Science Center that opened three months after his arrival.

Nick Saban and Alabama players have been extremely complimentary of Rhea and Ballou praising them for their work several times throughout the past two years.

“When they came in and we interviewed them, there was no question that from a sports science standpoint and from a conditioning standpoint they were like light-years in advance of what a lot of people have done in their programs for a long, long time,” Saban said in 2020.