TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Tommy Rees’ 6-foot-2, 200-pound frame wouldn’t fare too well on the offensive line, but the offensive coordinator’s hard-nosed mentality fits in just fine with Alabama’s big uglies up front.
During Alabama’s Media Day on Sunday, Rees, a former Notre Dame quarterback, said that if he could go back and play another position he’d be a pulling guard.
“I wasn't a very good quarterback, so I figured I could take another shot somewhere,” Rees joked. “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.”
Tyler Booker, who currently serves as one of the Crimson Tide’s starting guards, has doubts over how Rees would hold up in the role. However, he’s ready to adopt him as an honorary member of the unit all the same.
“Knowing how he likes to call plays, I think he has the mentality for it for sure,” Booker said. “Having an offensive coordinator who has that run-first mentality, has that ‘We’re going to pass to the ball as a complement to the run,’ that’s very reassuring to an offensive line.”
Sunday, Rees assured that he doesn’t plan on ripping up Alabama’s playbook this fall. However, the first-year coordinator does plan on providing a bit more balance to an offensive line that became overreliant on star quarterback Bryce Young last year.
While a strong running game was previously a staple of Alabama’s dynasty under Nick Saban, the Crimson Tide hasn’t produced a top-25 rushing unit since 2017. Some of that is due to a change in college football as passing has become more prevalent in today’s game. However, the Tide has uncharacteristically struggled to impose its will on opponents when it has needed to in recent years.
Alabama’s offensive linemen are hoping Rees’ new mentality will spark a change in that this season.
“We want to make people quit this year, and there’s no better way to doing that rather than running the ball,” Booker said. “We’re going to run the ball this year. We’re going to pass the ball as well because we have a lot of talented guys at receiver, we have a lot of guys that can throw the ball really well. Just having that run-first mentality as an offensive line, that just gets us going.”
During SEC Media Days last month, Alabama offensive lineman J.C. Latham wore a necklace with the initials TK for “trench king.” The starting right tackle confidently predicted a bounce-back year for the Tide’s offensive front, claiming the unit would return to its dominating ways and even take home this season’s Joe Moore Award.
Booker was equally confident Monday, using “physically dominating” as the words to describe himself as a blocker while stating that goes for the rest of the linemen in Alabama’s unit.
“That’s the mindset of the whole room,” Booker said. “We want to physically dominate you. We want to intimidate you. We want the third quarter to roll around and the defense to be like ‘Oh my gosh, we still can’t stop the run. How are we going to stop this run?’
“We want guys to tap out. We want guys to fear us.”
