The final vacancy on Alabama’s coaching staff might be filled sometime soon.
According to Sports Illustrated’s Thayer Evans, former Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Mel Tucker will become Alabama’s new secondary coach.
Tucker coming on board will officially mean that Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart will no longer be coaching the safeties, a position he moved to prior to last season. Evans reported that Smart will move back to focusing on inside linebackers.
Tucker’s most recent coaching stop was with the Chicago Bears. He was left without a job when Bears head coach Marc Trestman lost his earlier in the offseason. Tucker previously worked under Alabama head coach Nick Saban as a graduate assistant at Michigan State from 1997-98, and as a defensive backs coach at LSU in 2000. He has spent time coaching defensive backs at Ohio State, Miami of Ohio and the Cleveland Browns, and was an NFL defensive coordinator or co-defensive coordinator in Jacksonville, Cleveland and finally Chicago. Tucker was also the interim head coach of the Jaguars for five games in 2011.
His two seasons in Chicago were two of the worst in the team’s history, a time in which theyset records for the most yards and most points given up in a single season. But Tucker has years of experience at the highest level of football and clearly has an understanding of Saban’s defense. But he’ll have his work cut out for him.
Alabama gave up an average of 226 passing yards and 19 passing touchdowns last season, with only 11 interceptions. Other than Cyrus Jones, the cornerback position was a consistent point of weakness, and safety wasn’t much better. Star safety Landon Collins is headed to the NFL and two of the other four safeties that played regularly have graduated.
Alabama has plenty of talent waiting in the wings and coming in from high school, but Tucker will have to sort out a secondary that hasn’t produced at a consistently high level during the last two seasons.
With newly promoted outside linebackers coach Tosh Lupoi and now Tucker on board, Saban and the team hopes the new coaches can force change to happen sooner rather than later.
