We all know what Will Muschamp’s next job in college football will be.
Will Muschamp would be wise to spend a year, or two, as a defensive analyst at Alabama.
If you need any more proof of how brutal the coaching profession is, just look at what happened to Will Muschamp at South Carolina. After falling to 2-5 on the season, South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner fired his football team’s head coach in the middle of a global pandemic. South Carolina may want a head start on the coaching search, but Muschamp will be just fine.
The Nick Saban treatment is precisely what Will Muschamp needs
When a talented coach fails in the big chair, he is more likely than not to join Nick Saban’s coaching staff at Alabama. Guys like Kyle Flood, Butch Jones, Steve Sarkisian and Charlie Strong are all on the Alabama staff, hoping the Saban treatment will wash off all their coaching warts in the coming years. While Jones continues to wait, Sarkisian is about to get his next shot.
In recent years, we have seen former Saban disciples such as Lane Kiffin, Mike Locksley, Jim McElwain, Jeremy Pruitt and Kirby Smart leave Alabama for head-coaching opportunities. All five have led Power 5 teams and all but McElwain lead Power 5 teams currently. Not only does Muschamp have a reputation to shake off, but he must get that South Carolina stink off him, too.
Even though Sarkisian will be a finalist to replace him in Columbia, Muschamp has come across as a bit of a hot head in his two stints leading SEC East teams in South Carolina and with the Florida Gators before that. We know he is a fantastic defensive coach, stemming from his days as Saban’s defensive coordinator at LSU and assistant head coach to Saban with the Miami Dolphins, and on Mack Brown’s Texas Longhorns before heading to Florida.
Muschamp may only be a Power 5 defensive coordinator, but he is certainly young enough to get one last shot at leading a program of his own. Too bad most coaching careers go to die in Columbia. Muschamp may need the proverbial Saban treatment more than he realizes. At the very least, he could be re-invigorated by serving on Saban’s staff for the third time in his career.
Of course, there is another option for him to seriously consider, too. His college teammate Kirby Smart leads their alma mater’s Georgia Bulldogs. If Georgia’s defensive coordinator Dan Lanning gets a head-coaching gig of his own, Muschamp could absolutely run the Georgia defense for a dear friend. Let’s not forget that Muschamp’s son Jackson is a quarterback on the Georgia team.
Either way, Muschamp will have plenty of options to be a defensive coordinator or a defensive assistant in 2021 — if not this season. The best thing he can do is to reset next fall and really get down to basics of what did not work for him at Florida and South Carolina. Leaving the SEC footprint the third time around might be the way to go. For now, he must consider going to work for Saban once again.
We know that Muschamp will resurface in a year or so, but he may go reunite with his mentor.
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