Alabama offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan got a closer view of the Crimson Tide's season opener than he might have expected.

Just before the kickoff of Alabama's game against Western Kentucky, an announcement was made that the Hilltoppers’ headsets worn by coaches weren’t working. By rule, since Western Kentucky was unable to operate its headsets, Alabama was not allowed to use its own until the issue was fixed.

That forced Sheridan, who coaches from the booth and relays calls down to the field, to take an unexpected elevator ride to join his fellow coaches on the sidelines.

“That was a first for all of us,” Sheridan said during his press conference Monday. “I’ve called games before on the field. But normally when you’re going to do that you’re prepared for it. You might mark up your call sheet a little bit differently. I think in those moments you’re trying to provide calmness to the people around you, let the players know that it’s just fine, and you just adjust.”

Sheridan had to make two trips between the coach’s box and field level of Bryant-Denny Stadium, as Western Kentucky’s headsets went down a second time after initially coming back on. Sheridan said he was impressed by the fan atmosphere when he was on the field and joked that Alabama will have to plan for any future headset contingencies.

“It wasn’t that long,” Sheridan said of his elevator rides. “Most people were in the seats, so there weren’t too many people on the elevator. But we’ll be OK. We’ll be prepared for it next time, I guess, [in the event] I get stuck in the elevator.”

Sheridan’s unexpected change of venue to call plays had no negative effect during Alabama’s 63-0 thumping of Western Kentucky. It also did not affect the new in-helmet communication system that was introduced this season.

The new technology allows designated players wearing a green dot on their helmets to receive coaching instructions via a headset in their helmets. The communication is only one-way and shuts off with 15 seconds left on the play clock.

Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe and linebacker Deontate Lawson man the comms for the Crimson Tide. Saturday's opener gave the coaching staff their first chance to experiment with the technology during a game after working on implementing it this offseason.

“I thought by and large it was clean,” Sheridan said. “I think there was some communication that we can do better, collectively starting with me and then through the staff and through the players. I think that’s pretty typical of most first games where there’s a moment here or there where maybe you didn’t quite communicate as efficiently or move as quickly as you would like. But by and large, I think the guys did a nice job. I think we had one false start for the opener, we had a couple of holding calls. We had to burn a timeout early in the first half, you’d like to not have to do that. So there’s reasons for those things. There’s things that you address, both as a staff and to the players on just trying to eliminate those things moving forward, but for the most part for a first game, I thought it was relatively clean from a communication standpoint.”