by Kyle Golik
With news of the retirement of Nick Saban, so went football’s preeminent coaching rehabilitation in Tuscaloosa. Successful coaching rehab projects included Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian, Mike Locksley, and Brian Daboll.
Daboll was able to parlay his one season at Alabama to becoming a highly successful coordinator with Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills into the New York Giants head coaching job, where he was AP NFL Coach of the Year in 2022. He is one of the select few who have coached with Bill Belichick and Nick Saban, and arguably one of the most successful as Daboll has five Super Bowls and the 2017 College Football Playoff national championship.
One coach from the same tree who lacks the same success as Daboll is new Ohio State offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien, who, in eight seasons coaching under Bill Belichick and Nick Saban, has zero championships.
O’Brien’s hire at Ohio State was met with some fanfare, especially from head coach Ryan Day, who said in a press release, “I am extremely pleased to be able to add Bill O’Brien to our coaching staff,” Day said. “He brings with him a wealth of knowledge – and a tremendous amount of success – at both the NFL and collegiate levels. He is an excellent and experienced offensive coach who has run NFL and Power 5 programs and developed some truly elite players throughout his career. He’ll be an excellent teacher and recruiter for us, and he absolutely strengthens our staff.”
The release also mentioned Brian Hartline, who was Ohio State’s offensive coordinator in 2023, will be co-offensive coordinator in addition to coaching the wide receivers. It is anticipated that Corey Dennis, who has been Ohio State’s quarterbacks coach for the past four seasons, will transition into a different role within the program.
With O’Brien’s addition, there are legitimate concerns that follow him to Columbus.
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The pro-O’Brien crowd will likely point to my colleague Mike Huessman’s column, where he feels O’Brien possesses an undeserved bad rap.
When you look at why O’Brien went to Alabama, it is no secret he needed to rid the stench of his failure as a general manager along with his head coaching duties with the Houston Texans. O’Brien was not a bad head coach in the NFL. He managed to take the Texans to the NFL Playoffs four times and finished over .500 as a coach.
After assuming the general manager’s role in 2020, it was O’Brien’s tumultuous relationship with wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins that carried over to his general manager role that led to his controversial trade of Hopkins for running back David Johnson that did O’Brien in.
As Huessman wrote, O’Brien was an integral part in the development of Bryce Young, who would go on to win the Heisman Trophy. It was a regression in a lot of other areas that led to the stigma from the Alabama faithful.
The first major area was the ground game, where during O’Brien’s two-year tenure in Tuscaloosa, the Crimson Tide had five games where they finished under 100 yards rushing, including having only six yards rushing against LSU in 2021, the fewest in Nick Saban’s tenure at Alabama, and 30 yards rushing against Georgia in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game in 2021.
In O’Brien’s two seasons, Alabama had five games where they finished under 100 yards. In comparison, if you combine the Lane Kiffin, Brian Daboll, Mike Locksley, and Steve Sarkisian tenures between 2014 and 2020, it only happened twice.
When you look at Ohio State, one of the major areas they need to improve on is their rushing attack, considering during Day’s first season as Ohio State’s head coach, the Buckeyes churned out 267.3 yards per game on the ground. Compared to last season, the Buckeyes averaged 138.8 yards per game.
Another pain point of O’Brien’s offensive scheme was poor pass protection by the Alabama offensive line.
During the 2021 season, quarterback Bryce Young was sacked 41 times. To put it into perspective, Alabama surrendered 47 total sacks between 2018 and 2020. Since 2009, the only other Alabama offensive line in Nick Saban’s tenure to give up 30 or more sacks was the 2010 unit that gave up 32.
Ohio State had pass protection issues with quarterback Kyle McCord this past season, where the Buckeyes were 46th in the nation in sacks surrendered.
Ultimately, O’Brien’s goal at Alabama was to return to the NFL, considering that after his tenure with Georgia Tech between 1995 and 2002, O’Brien never spent more than two seasons at any stop, including Maryland (2003-2004), Duke (2005-2006), Penn State as head coach (2012-2013), and Alabama (2021-2022), O’Brien went all in to return to a place he felt he could parlay into an NFL head coaching job, he returned to Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots.
O’Brien’s mission was to work a reclamation project with former Alabama quarterback Mac Jones and get Jones and the Patriots offense back to the 2021 season that saw New England in the playoffs and Jones one of the hottest commodities in football.
Many analysts felt O’Brien’s return to New England would be a perfect match when you consider O’Brien’s familiarity with Belichick. With just coaching Alabama, he knows how Mac Jones was developed.
The actual results were a disaster as the Patriots plummeted to a 4-13 record as they boasted a Top 10 total defense and finished 15th in scoring defense. The offense was at the bottom of the league, finishing 30th in total offense and 31st in scoring offense.
Patriots Insider Tom E. Curran reported that O’Brien’s exit was fueled by the frustrations the defensive coaches had with the ineptitude of the offensive coaches, and with O’Brien being a Belichick choice to come fix, many Patriots administrators were hoping for O’Brien to stay, considering the raw deal it was the first season. But with inside linebacker coach Jerod Mayo succeeding Belichick as head coach, O’Brien wasn’t going to coexist with Mayo, and he felt his departure would be mutually beneficial to both sides.
With O’Brien now looking to get rehabilitated once again in the college game, he goes to Ohio State, where Ryan Day really has found his groove again.
The question now is how does Brian Hartline feel going from the sole offensive coordinator to seemingly either sharing the job or having the title in name only?
How much input will Hartline have on the offense? A bigger question is how much input will Ryan Day have on the offense and what level of autonomy O’Brien will have.
Corey Dennis has been involved in coaching Ohio State quarterbacks Dwayne Haskins, Justin Fields, and CJ Stroud, all of whom were NFL first-round picks. Does one year with Kyle McCord really necessitate a reassignment for a guy who, let’s be honest, Tom Brady coached Bill O’Brien, not the other way around?
Inadvertently, does this hire create a schism amongst Day’s ranks that may motivate others to look elsewhere? Time will tell on that front.
Ultimately, O’Brien won’t be a fixture in Columbus that isn’t his “modus operandi” or M.O. The way college football is presently constructed isn’t made for O’Brien; he desires back into the NFL, and the mistake Day made bringing O’Brien to Columbus is that he brings ostensible value long term for the program, with the interim highly questionable.
