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BREAKING OLD THREAD - Bill O’Brien a candidate for OC (update: officially hired!)

Cruloc

Cruloc

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So I take it from the other posts this is a good hire. What will he be left with next year? Young at QB...Sanders at RB...I'm guessing Metchie will be WR #1...and what do we look like on OL next season?
 
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Power Eye

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Cruloc said:
So I take it from the other posts this is a good hire. What will he be left with next year? Young at QB...Sanders at RB...I'm guessing Metchie will be WR #1...and what do we look like on OL next season?
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Honestly, What player in college football, much less the SEC, do you think “oh he could make a difference”
 
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BAMAVILLE

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Cruloc said:
So I take it from the other posts this is a good hire. What will he be left with next year? Young at QB...Sanders at RB...I'm guessing Metchie will be WR #1...and what do we look like on OL next season?
Click to expand...
I think Billingsley and Robinson will be back too plus a boatload of talented freshmen at WR to go along with the core we currently have, I think CBO will be more than fine with the talent we have at offense
 
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Nolan

Nolan

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Cruloc said:
So I take it from the other posts this is a good hire. What will he be left with next year? Young at QB...Sanders at RB...I'm guessing Metchie will be WR #1...and what do we look like on OL next season?
Click to expand...
Neal and Ekiyor return. Plenty of talent and size to step in and compete for a spot. Hard to see how we could be as dominant as this year, but imo we will be very, very good.
 
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BamaInBham

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What a fabulous hire. At least on paper, could not have done any better. It's even possible that he is an upgrade from Sarkisian (and I was a BIG fan of the Sark hire from the beginning). The following quote is my reply to someone's query about O'Brien in another thread. Currently added notes are in italics.

Bill O'Brien would be a great hire, likely at least the same caliber as Sark, possibly an upgrade.

He was a college OC & QB coach for 2 years each at GT and Duke. Was QB coach at NE in 09-10, 10 was when Brady had his greatest season, one of the greatest of all time. He was NE OC in 2011, when he guided Matt Cassel, subbing for the injured Brady, to an 11-5 season, Cassel looking very good. The type of season he was never to replicate elsewhere.

Hired to resurrect PSU's crushed program in 2012. Turned their QB, can't remember his name (Matt McGloin), who looked absolutely hopeless prior into a legitimate college QB. The transformation was beyond amazing. Won Big10 COY, and Paul Bryant national COY awards among others. That was with an 8-4 record. Was offered NFL jobs at Cleveland and one other, I've forgotten, but he turned them down saying that he would not leave PSU after one season (though he wanted an NFL job). Took the Houston job after the following year.

Won 4 Division titles (weak div but still) and 2nd one year in the next 6 years. Was 2-4 in playoffs.

Has much better resume than Kiffin, Sark or Daboll all of whom I was excited to get (in general NFL coaches are technically superior to college coaches). (I knew that Saban had tried to hire Kiffin at least once when he first got to Bama, but was turned down one or both times).

(His failings, real though IMO, overstated, were as a GM, which will not come into play at Alabama. His talent evaluation was good at PSU.)

Saban never gets on someone who does their job (not meaning that he requires success but simply that they do what they know to do, i.e., in general Saban is very reasonable). Sark and others have never had a problem. He would never get on O'Brien, IMO, certainly not in public - too, too much well-deserved respect. (This paragraph was in response to an expressed concern about O'Brien's abrasiveness, e.g., his public confrontation with Brady. They made up, however forced.)
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Saban4Ever

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techster79 said:
Every time the camera was on him he was crouched looking down at the play sheet. Just amazing to call a game that way.
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I don't know much about Bill O'Brian but it would be hard to upgrade after what Sark has done. I wish Bama could somehow pay Sark A LOT and get him to stay. At least get someone who can call similar plays and know when to execute those plays. I hope to see Sark back at Bama down the road. RTR
 
KrAzY3

KrAzY3

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This isn't the name I would select if I could just will who ever I wanted to come to Alabama. Having said that, Saban doesn't have that power either.

What I have said a few times on this forum is that even a mediocre NFL coach is usually going to be pretty darn good in college.
 
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