Ryan Grubb is a big puzzle piece for Alabama football, but not the whole puzzle

Ryan Grubb is a big puzzle piece for Alabama football, but not the whole puzzle | Goodbread

Posted by author February 3, 2025 Football

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Ryan Grubb was here. I promise.

He blew through Tuscaloosa faster than you can get through Cottondale running a stop sign, but he was the first choice to be Alabama football’s offensive coordinator under Kalen DeBoer last year. He was in town just a couple weeks — long enough to pick up some Alabama gear, speak to a few boosters and do some recruiting — but not long enough to sign a formal contract. Attracted by the chance to stay in Seattle, where he’d coached under DeBoer at Washington, he left Alabama at the altar to accept the offensive coordinator job with the Seattle Seahawks, who promptly fired him 51 weeks later.

There’s a palpable buzz about his return to UA, and there should be. The Crimson Tide offense was disjointed at best last year, sustaining a flat tire on a road trip to Knoxville, and two flat tires on the way to Norman. But for the same reason 2024 offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan wasn’t entirely to blame for that, Grubb shouldn’t be considered a 2025 savior: great players win games moreso than great schemes. And Alabama just didn’t have enough great offensive players; only Tyler Booker and Ryan Williams fit that description.

The Alabama defense suffered season-ending injuries to three starters, including a team captain in Deontae Lawson, and still played consistently enough for Alabama to qualify for the College Football Playoff. The same can’t be said of the offense, which was far healthier, yet less effective.

First and foremost, Grubb will have to spur the development of quarterback Ty Simpson as a starter. As the presumed play caller, his relationship with UA’s most experienced option at the position has to be better than good. For him, that’s what coaches refer to as a “controllable.” What’s less in his control is whether a dangerous third receiver can be developed to complement Williams and Germie Bernard. Or whether Alabama’s speed-bump pass protection at right tackle improves, or whether the line as a whole can generate more of a push in the running game.

All that will require an infusion of talent, be it from the transfer portal or otherwise.

When last we saw Grubb as a college coach, leading DeBoer’s UW Huskies to the 2023 CFP National Championship Game, he was working with three first-round draft picks (QB Michael Penix, WR Rome Odunze and OL Troy Fautanu), plus two more drafted in the second round and another chosen in the third. That’s a light year ahead of what Alabama’s 2024 offense will produce for this year’s NFL draft.

As obvious a hire as Grubb is for DeBoer — they don’t get any more predictable than this one — there is one curious aspect of it: what took so long? Grubb was fired by the Seahawks on Jan. 6, four solid weeks before news broke that he’s now Tuscaloosa-bound. That’s an eternity in the winter hiring cycle of college football coaches, even this late in the cycle, when the carousel has begun to slow down.

Perhaps it took some time for DeBoer to rearrange the chairs in the staff conference room. That’s no small task when you’re keeping 2024 co-offensive coordinators Sheridan and JaMarcus Shephard, especially when the pair earned a combined $2.45 million in base pay last year, both to begin multi-year contracts. Last summer, the NCAA eliminated the rule that limited head coaches to 10 on-field assistants, so nobody has to be fired to make room for Grubb. But, you don’t add a new offensive coordinator without having to shuffle multiple roles. And that’s got to be figured out up front; you don’t hire a Grubb to oversee half the staff and figure out the fallout later.

There is no question Grubb is a brilliant offensive mind. He inherited one of the NFL’s worst offensive lines with the Seahawks, a recipe for disaster in the Sunday league, and Seattle still managed to go 10-7.

But he won’t work any miracles without improved personnel.

And that challenge falls more on DeBoer.

Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on X.com @chasegoodbread.