Bill O'Brien reveals why he came to Alabama, how the experience has helped him

Bill O’Brien was the laughing stock of the NFL when Nick Saban hired him ahead of the 2021 season. With one year as Alabama‘s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under his belt, he’s helped produce the first-ever Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback in Crimson Tide history, won a SEC Championship and made it to the national championship game last season.

Experiencing more success in his one season than he did during his entire tenure as Houston Texans head coach, he seemed to find his niche in Tuscaloosa under Nick Saban. In his first year with the program, Alabama finished No. 7 in the country in total offense with 488.2 yards per game – something that doesn’t happen very often in the NFL.

“When you get fired in coaching, you find out really right away that maybe you don’t have as many friends as you thought you did have,” O’Brien said. “And I think when Coach Saban reached out to me and talked to me about this job was they were getting ready for the national championship game [in 2020],I didn’t feel like – as I talked about it with my wife, Colleen, and our family – I didn’t think it was anything that I could pass up to go to have the opportunity to work for the greatest college coach of all time, arguably one of the greatest coaches of any sport, I don’t think you could pass that up.

“To learn from him, to come into this program and see how he does things, to be an offensive coordinator again with a lot of great players and a great coaching staff, that wasn’t anything that I could pass up and so we talked about it for about a day and we decided that that was the best decision for our family.”

That isn’t to say the NFL isn’t knocking on his door again, though. O’Brien was previously an assistant for the Patriots from 2007-11 and later the head coach of the Houston Texans from 2014-20, so it wouldn’t have been surprising if he decided to rejoin the NFL fold. However, right now his focus remains on the Alabama offense as they look to compete for a national title in 2022.

“I don’t know that’s something that’s down the road for me, again, like I said earlier, I’m very focused on trying to improve this offense each and every day and work with the coaching staff to get better,” he said. “But if I’m fortunate enough to have that opportunity again — and who knows if that will come down the pike — but if it is, this will be an amazingly invaluable experience for me because I’m able to watch coach [Saban] every single day … It’s something that I’ll hold dear dear to me for the rest of my career, this experience here.”