Everything OC Tommy Rees said at Alabama's preseason Media Day

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Alabama held its annual Media Day on Sunday at the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility, where Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban, defensive coordinator Kevin Steele and offensive coordinator Tommy Rees spoke to local reporters. Below is everything Rees said in his only media availability before or during the 2023 regular season.

“First of all, thanks everybody for being here. Excited for my first opportunity to get to know you all and have an opportunity to speak in front of you all. Obviously, very fortunate to be here. Alabama’s a place that has been proven to be pretty special to coach at. We have great young men, we have great players here that are hungry to get better and hungry to do things the right way. I’m surrounded every day by I think the best offensive staff, defensive staff and support staff in the country. The people here have really opened their arms and treated us well. I think we have a ton of buy-in right now among our staff and players, which makes coming to work really enjoyable every day. I think we’re all energized and hungry to continue to practice, continue to get better and continue to see how good we can be.

“This is something that we take very seriously, something that we take a lot of pride in, and we’re excited to see this thing go in the right direction, and see how our players continue to respond and get better. But we’re only three days into training camp here, so a lot of questions, a lot of things to continue to unfold, but we really are enjoying the direction that the players are going in, and believe that we have a good blend of veteran presence and young talent. It’s our job as coaches and as staff to continue to put them in a position to have success, and try to get the very most out of them.”

On his desire to be a pulling guard in another life…

“I wasn’t a very good quarterback, so I figured I could take another shot somewhere. Like that physical part of the game has always resonated with me. I think the offensive line is a group that can be unsung a little bit. Really without that group of five in front of you, it’s hard to do anything well, not just run the football, not just throw the football, but really, you face an uphill battle. I just always like the camaraderie of the group of the guys up front. There’s a toughness to this game that I always felt like I missed by playing quarterback, and something that I kind of longed for. But yeah, I’ve broughten that up a few times.”

On his emotions when Saban reached out…

“Shoot, I competed against him as a player, sort of, and again as a coach in ’20. So obviously I faced two great teams in this program’s history and really preparing for those games, you could see and feel just the intensity at which Alabama prepared in. I mean, the call is something that was honestly something a little surreal. But at the end of the day, this is my profession, this is something that I want to be doing for a long time. I want to make sure if the opportunity to interview did present itself after the call, it was something that I was prepared for. Obviously just knowing Coach from a distance there and what he looks for in his coaches, and what he expects of the guys in this building, I want to make sure that I was fully prepared to have an opportunity that was presented to me. You kind of try to flush the emotion as quickly as you can and just take it as another interview, because that’s really what it was. Try not to let any of that other stuff cloud your judgment or your mind.

On learning the Alabama offense…

“First of all, I think it’s the right way to do it. There’s been a system in place here for however-many years, and players here that are familiar with terminology, with what you’re trying to accomplish. To say one guy is going to come in here and change everything would be the wrong way to approach it. I wholeheartedly agree with that. The learning curve is what it is. I don’t find it to be too steep at all. I think when you have a general base knowledge of the game, there’s only so many run plays you can run, only so many pass concepts you can have. It’s just training your brain to switch how you call it. So really it wasn’t a steep learning curve at all. This offense, obviously, has been prolific over the past decade. To come in here and say we’re going to change all these things would be foolish. There’s certain things that we want to do or alter or look at to enhance it, but a wholesale change would never make sense. There’s still times that you’ve got to remind yourself that, ‘Hey, we’re calling it this.’ We have a great staff, a great support staff with our analysts and GAs that help us with all those issues and all those little things. But our players have really bought into what we’re asking them to do. For me to come in and learn the system was maybe a smoother transition than maybe I anticipated.”

On the difference in living in Alabama…

“No, I mean, we’ve really embraced the differences in the culture. It’s hotter. I learned that yesterday pretty quick. The people have been really warm for us. We’ve come in here and felt welcomed and all that. I think when we moved into our house, we had about 10 neighbors come drop off baskets. That’s something that probably hadn’t happened before. The thing that really I resonate the most with is the love and the passion for the game of football. I mean, I was at a spring scrimmage on a Thursday night during the month of May in recruiting and you felt like it was a Friday night of the fall. And that’s something somebody that loves the game and grew up around it, like that energized me. And you feel the passion and support of the people and the fans for this game, for this program and at the high school level. It’s really cool to be a part of. So we’ve fully embraced it. We love being here and really are enjoying it.”

On his role in Tyler Buchner ending up at Alabama…

“When he went into the portal, we looked at an opportunity to add competition to the room. I think competition at all positions is going to bring out the best in individuals. It’s going to add an extra layer of development. It’s going to allow people to rise with the competition. I think one thing we’re trying to get the whole quarterback group to understand is, when one guy has success, first of all, we need to look at it as shared success. We need to look at it as the group. We want to leave practice saying, the quarterback position, the quarterback group had a good day. The other thing we want to see is when one quarterback has success, it’s going to challenge the rest of the group. And when we can do that, it’s going to raise the level of play in the room. And so we don’t want to look at it and shy away from it, we want to look at it as an opportunity to improve for the entire group.

“To answer your question probably more directly, Ty’s a guy I recruited at a young age, obviously spent two seasons with him. He provides a little bit of veteran presence in the room and adds competition. I think he’s hit the ground running with the rest of the guys on the team, especially with the rest of the quarterbacks, and it’s been really a healthy transition.”

On what it says about Jalen Milroe, Ty Simpson to stick around…

“I think they’ve both improved greatly from the spring. I think there’s been more buy-in since spring ball ended and just doing more, doing extra to get themselves prepared. I think it shows, first of all, a great amount of character, a great amount of competitiveness for those two guys. But it also shows a love for their teammates and a love for being here. And honestly, it speaks volumes about the program that guys want to stay here. And so I think it’s really special that in this age of college football, especially at the quarterback position when guys are so eager to leave, that two guys looked at an opportunity to stay here, to care about their teammates, to continue to improve. Ultimately, we’re trying to build as healthy of a room as we can. They understood that competition can bring out the best in them. They’ve been great the entire process throughout, and I don’t expect that to change.”

On Alabama’s running backs…

“I think we have a great group there. We have a really healthy blend of some veteran guys. Obviously we have a couple of young players in the room still. I think they all play a physical brand of football. They’re extremely well prepared. Coach Gillespie does an unbelievable job with that room. Really never any issues. They know their assignment. They play hard. They play physical, and we have a great blend of guys that can do kind of a little bit of different things coming out of the backfield in the pass game, running between the tackles. So we’re a little bit spoiled in that position if we’re being honest here. We’re very talented there, and I’m excited to see how the pieces fall together and excited to see how we can enhance some of those guys’ roles moving forward.”

On how much freedom does he feel to implement his own offense…

“Philosophically, we always start with, how can we win with people? How can we win with the people that we have, and how can we put them in position to be successful? So, any wrinkle is really personnel-driven – like these guys do these things well, or we’re built to do this. That’s what we want to focus on, and then we continue to bring the other parts along. So there’s the freedom there to say, ‘Hey, we do these three things well. Now we can implement it to the offense and enhance it.’ I do think we’re probably going to look different than when I was elsewhere because our personnel is different. There’s different strengths, there’s different areas that we can take advantage of. We don’t have a system, or I don’t have a system that says, ‘Hey, you have to fit into these squares.’ It’s more about how can I fit what you do and what you do really well and to enhance in our offense. And again, our mantra is ‘win with people.’ And we’re going to find ways to allow our players to be in positions to have great success.”

On how to balance reps between three quarterbacks…

“There are some challenges. We practice in a way where there’s plenty of opportunities and reps for those guys to get. The thing I’m fortunate for is our quarterbacks understand it and they don’t have egos. We’re trying to tell them, ‘Hey, when you’re in there, you’re the guy,’ and we want them to own those opportunities and own those reps. They’ve bought into that. They’ve been supportive of one another. Eli and Dylan are still getting plenty of reps. We’re really reppin’ five guys right now, which is probably really rare. If you go across the country, probably nobody is reppin’ five guys. But the way we practice, the way we give our guys opportunities, it allows for that to happen. Our players have bought into it. We have had opportunities to give them longer chunks of plays to get them into a rhythm. Sometimes it’s a little choppier. But we want to make sure we’re mixing up how we’re rotating, we’re mixing up different periods that guys get so they’re exposed to different situational football. Again, our players have made it easy for me because they’ve been receptive to it. They just want to make the most of every opportunity they get.”

On his impressions of the tight end room…

“Coach Cox, he’s done an unbelievable job of getting that room to continually and steadily improve. I think we have more than enough talent in that room. I think we have different body types in that room, which allows us to mix and match the personnel and use them in different roles. But it’s a room that’s deep, it’s a room that’s talented, and it’s a room that’s steadily improving. I think, again, you bring in CJ who’s a veteran that’s played a lot of football, you have some guys that were on the roster a year ago that didn’t play a ton but you’re hoping they can continue to progress, and I think they’ve done that. Again, the room looks different, top to bottom. Everybody has different strengths and things that they do really well, so our job, as a staff, is to make sure we can personnel things the right way to get the right people in the right spots.”

On how wide receivers, tight ends affect the personnel on the field…

“I think, obviously, that’s a week-to-week decision, with how we’re trying to attack a team and what the theme of that gameplan would be. Again, I think our tight ends are plenty talented enough right now to feature them in some things, but we have a deep receiver room that’s talented as well. That blend, how can we still be a physical brand of football with the personnel we have on the field, but also understand that we have some wideouts that can really break things open. As a staff, the blend of personnel and the way we use it and the way we can keep a defense off balance by looking different, play-to-play, is something we want to have at our disposal. I think we have tight ends that can do a lot of different things for us. We have plenty of wideouts who can go make plays and put them in position to be successful. We were fortunate at Notre Dame to have good tight ends, but I don’t really see it any different with the group that we have here.”

On how he builds relationships with quarterbacks…

“Not different than any other relationship that matters in your life. I think it has to be built on — you have to relate with people, you have to be honest with them, you have to build trust early. You have to find something off the field that you can connect with so they don’t feel like it’s always transactional. There needs to be an actual, caring relationship there. I think, early on, you show them that you care, you show them that you want to build trust, you show them that you’re going to set the expectations at a high level and hold them to that all the time. That’s what they want. But then you have to have moments, too, away from the game, where you can have a relationship based on other things and other interests that they’re into. I do believe that the relationship between the quarterback and the play-caller is as important as anything. They have to be an extension of what we’re trying to do as a staff, and the only way you can get there is if there’s full trust — and it’s a two-way street — between a play-caller and the quarterback.”

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