A season in the dustbin merely the last week means an offseason of massive changes for Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer’s Crimson Tide program.
Gone for other opportunities are star ex-wideouts coach JaMarcus Shephard, now head coach at Oregon State, and former co-offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan, now running the offensive show in Pat Fitzgerald’s Michigan State program.
The Tide this week announced that veteran Southeastern Conference assistant Derrick Nix had been hired as replacement to Shephard, as FootballScoop reported in mid-December that Nix was a Tide target; Nix is an Alabama native with extensive SEC experience at both Auburn and Ole Miss.
And while Sheridan, a former Michigan player and University of Tennessee assistant who also coordinated the offense at Indiana earlier this decade, previously coached quarterbacks for the Crimson Tide in his co-coordinator role, DeBoer isn’t going to look outside the Alabama staff for Sheridan’s replacement, FootballScoop has learned.
Sources tell FootballScoop that Alabama is moving Bryan Ellis from his role as Alabama’s tight ends coach to oversee development of the Crimson Tide quarterbacks.
A former collegiate quarterback at UAB, Ellis has deep experience tutoring quarterbacks in college football — including at the Power Conference level. Ellis was the quarterbacks coach for the USC Trojans under Clay Helton in 2018. Ellis also was an offensive assistant who worked with eventual first round NFL Draft Pick Sam Darnold in 2017.
He’s coached quarterbacks for Tyson Helton at Western Kentucky and again for Clay Helton at Georgia Southern before joining DeBoer’s inaugural Alabama staff two years ago.
With Ellis set to now run the Tide’s quarterbacks room moving forward, sources tell FootballScoop that DeBoer is going to seek a new tight ends coach to replace the post just vacated by Ellis’s transition.
Alabama finished the regular season with a 10-2 mark but lost two of its final three games in blowout-fashion, turning in consecutive seasons of four or more losses for the first two in two decades of Alabama Crimson Tide football.
Still, DeBoer was perceived as a top candidate for openings atop Big Ten Conference powerhouses Michigan and Penn State last month, with several sources telling FootballScoop that officials or parties acting behalf of their athletics departments vetted DeBoer and sought to speak with him on both openings.
He reaffirmed his commitment to Alabama with a public statement through the school’s official Yea! Alabama Collective.
The Crimson Tide are scheduled to open Year 3 under DeBoer Sept. 5, 2026, against Blake Harrell’s East Carolina Pirates before beginning SEC play a week later at Kentucky, under the direction of first-year head coach Will Stein, the former Oregon offensive coordinator who faced DeBoer’s Washington Huskies in 2023.
Alabama then gets a shot to avenge one of its four losses of the 2025 season in Week 3 when Florida State visits Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Sept. 19, 2026.