Throughout his 17 highly productive seasons as Alabama’s football coach, Nick Saban repeatedly struck it rich with offensive coordinators.
Jim McElwain, Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian called the plays for national championship Crimson Tide teams before using that success to eventually claim Southeastern Conference head-coaching roles. Kiffin and Sarkisian currently oversee programs — Ole Miss and Texas, respectively — with preseason top-10 rankings.
Brian Daboll, who called the plays for Alabama’s 2017 national champs, is entering his third season as head coach of the NFL’s New York Giants.
It’s a new era at Alabama, but first-year Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer has put his trust in Nick Sheridan to keep the program’s offensive engine humming. The 36-year-old Sheridan spent the past two seasons as Washington’s tight ends coach under DeBoer, who guided the Huskies to a sizzling 25-3 record and a berth in last season’s championship game of the final four-team edition of the College Football Playoff.
“I think Nick has a brilliant mind,” DeBoer said last month at the SEC’s media days event in Dallas. “I know Nick is extremely sharp in knowing how to go on tangents we need to with the personnel we have to make the offense the best that it can be.”
Sheridan is inheriting an Alabama offense headed by redshirt junior quarterback Jalen Milroe, who finished sixth in last year’s Heisman Trophy balloting, and a stellar left side of the line containing junior guard Tyler Booker and sophomore tackle Kadyn Proctor. The two top running backs, sophomore Justice Haynes and junior Jam Miller, combined for only 66 carries last season but totaled 369 yards and averaged 5.6 yards per carry.
Then there is the uniqueness of having prominent Washington transfers such as redshirt sophomore center Parker Brailsford, who is sharing a slew of preseason laurels with Tennessee fifth-year senior Cooper Mays, and junior receiver Germie Bernard.
“We have quality players at all positions, and we’re trying to be tough to defend in all areas,” Sheridan said last week in a news conference. “That’s what great offenses do. They can execute what they need to in the moments that they have to.
“On different weeks in different matchups against different schemes that you’re going against, defenses are going to require that you attack a certain way.”
Sheridan is a former Michigan walk-on quarterback who arrived at Ann Arbor in 2006 and eventually earned a scholarship and made four starts for the 2008 Wolverines. He spent three seasons as a Tennessee graduate assistant under Butch Jones from 2014-16, with those years yielding a 25-14 record and three bowl victories.
In 2019, Sheridan was Indiana’s tight ends coach and DeBoer the offensive coordinator, and when DeBoer left the Hoosiers following that season for his first head-coaching opportunity at Fresno State, Sheridan was elevated to offensive coordinator for the Big Ten program.
Sheridan’s quarterback at Indiana for his two seasons calling plays was current Atlanta Falcons rookie Michael Penix Jr. Penix led the Hoosiers to a 6-2 record and an unexpectedly good 6-1 Big Ten mark during the COVID-altered season of 2020, though he missed the final two games after tearing the ACL in his right knee for a second time.
Penix returned to the field for the Hoosiers early in the 2021 season but suffered a separated shoulder in the fourth game, which resulted in the team bottoming out at 2-10.
The 2020-21 seasons have been the only two of Sheridan’s career in which he has been offensive coordinator, so there hasn’t been much of a sample size to define his style. Ryan Grubb served as Washington’s offensive coordinator last season and now has that same role with the Seattle Seahawks.
“I think the mixing up of tempos is important,” Sheridan said. “The pace of play has always been something that offenses utilize to try and create an advantage, whatever that may look like. We’ll be ready to do whatever we feel is going to help us win.”
Alabama’s most recent national championship team in 2020 possessed one of the great offenses in the sport’s history, with receiver DeVonta Smith winning the Heisman and with quarterback Mac Jones third and running back Najee Harris fifth in the balloting.
The Tide averaged 48.5 points and 541.6 yards per game that season, with Alabama’s 2021 team averaging 488.2 yards and its 2022 squad averaging 477.2. Last year’s Tide, however, slipped to 34.0 points and 393.1 yards per game under the direction of Tommy Rees, who temporarily benched Milroe in September before the quarterback reclaimed his starting role.
Now it’s time for Sheridan to do the navigating, though he will have the familiar insight and services of former Washington receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard — not to mention DeBoer himself.
“I think in any relationship that trust is earned, and Coach DeBoer has hired some great people who are high quality in what they do,” Sheridan said. “He does a great job of setting a vision for the staff on what his standards and expectations are. He’s constantly holding us to that, and we have collective high standards. He empowers his staff, and he hires people he trusts.
“Coach DeBoer is a brilliant offensive mind, but he’s a phenomenal football coach in all areas.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.
AP photo by Michelle Haas Hutchins / Alabama offensive lineman Tyler Booker and quarterback Jalen Milroe celebrate a touchdown during last November’s win at Kentucky, which clinched the Crimson Tide’s spot in the SEC championship game. Booker and Milroe are two of the key returning players for Alabama’s offense under first-year Tide coordinator Nick Sheridan.ALABAMA 2024 SCHEDULE
All times Eastern and p.m.
8/31 — WESTERN KENTUCKY (7 on ESPN)
9/7 — SOUTH FLORIDA (7 on ESPN)
9/14 — at Wisconsin (noon on Fox)
9/28 — GEORGIA (7:30 on ABC)
10/5 — at Vanderbilt (TBA)
10/12 — SOUTH CAROLINA (noon on ABC or ESPN)
10/19 — at Tennessee (TBA)
10/26 — MISSOURI (TBA)
11/9 — at LSU (TBA)
11/16 — MERCER (2 on ESPN+)
11/23 — at Oklahoma (TBA)
11/30 — AUBURN (TBA)