“No ghosting here,” Dan Enos says.
Nick Saban’s Alabama coaching staffs have long had a lot of turnover. Part of that’s the nature of the industry, part of it’s Saban’s ability to churn out desirable candidates for other jobs, and part of it might be that he’s an extremely demanding boss.
But turnover’s been more extreme than usual after a 2018 season that ended with a National Championship blowout loss to Clemson. There’s only one coach left from Bama’s 2017 staff, and half his 2018 coaches have moved on. One of them is QBs coach Dan Enos, who left last week to be Miami’s offensive coordinator, despite Saban saying he’d make him Bama’s.
On Thursday, The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman reported that Enos was already gone for Miami before Saban had realized he was leaving.
Feldman’s story is here. One excerpt of it says Saban asked at a staff meeting:
“Where the F#$% is Dan?!?”
Several of the staffers knew the answer to their boss’ question. Word had already spread that 50-year-old Enos was headed to Miami to become offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach under Manny Diaz. No one in the room wanted to be the one to break that news to Saban, even though Miami was primed to announce it in a couple hours.
One staffer scrambled to check if Enos was in his office. It was empty, save for a pencil on the desk. Maybe he’d already moved into Locksley’s old office, but that one was empty, too.
“He moved out like the Colts,” said one person with knowledge of the matter, equating Enos’ departure to the middle-of-the-night exit by the old Baltimore NFL franchise to Indianapolis.
It’s the second coach departure of the offseason that seems to have really irked Saban. Former receivers coach Josh Gattis said he was “getting my butt chewed out” in the meeting where he told the head coach he was leaving for Michigan.
But Enos is insistent he did not do to Saban what college kids and 20-somethings do after a few days talking to someone they met on Tinder.
I would never leave an employer without telling them I was doing so. No ghosting here. Nothing but respect for CNS and Alabama. Bottom line, business is business and it was time for me to exit. Wish all the best to RTR, CNS and the program.
— Dan Enos (@CoachDanEnos) January 17, 2019
Yeah, don’t call it a ghosting.
Enos merely found a team he liked more, broke up with the Tide, and started dating that new team. Was there overlap? I don’t know. Was there overlap when Jackie from Tri Delta stopped texting Kurt from Pike after they went to Noodles & Company a couple times and matched with Derek from Kappa Alpha? Who’s to say? And who’s to judge?
The whole thing, really, is a matter of interpretation.
No one begrudges him leaving. Everyone has a right to pursue whatever employment opportunities they want. We can debate ghosting and what it means, but Enos absolutely cleaned out his office after everyone was gone and didn’t show up the next day for the staff meeting. https://t.co/Xl7e4qOcHv
— Aaron Suttles (@AaronSuttles) January 18, 2019
For his part, Saban will have to return to the coaching market and start swiping right. A good match is hard to find, but here’s to him finding the right fit for his personality.