Mike Locksley said he talked with people at Alabama and is “assured” that Nick Saban’s critical comments about last year’s coaching staff were not directed at the new Maryland head coach.
“I know this, why wouldn’t I want to win the national championship to springboard my time here at Maryland?,” Locksley said per Emily Giambalvo of the Washington Post. “I can sleep at night knowing we did a great job. We broke records there on offense. We gave ourselves a chance to win except one game, which I understand the expectation at Alabama is to win championships and we picked the national championship to not execute well.”
Earlier this week during the SEC Media Day, Saban referenced the Crimson Tide coaching staff having their “own agendas” towards the end of last season, presumably implying to one of the reasons Alabama fell short of winning a national title.
“When the season started, I think we were great,” Saban told SEC Network’s Paul Finebaum Wednesday. “When we won the LSU game, it just seemed like people’s own agendas starting to become more important.”
Asked to clarify who he was talking about, Saban pointed to his assistant coaches.
“We had a lot of guys who wanted to be head coaches at different places,” he said. “It takes a special person to say focused on what they have to do now when they have job somewhere else that’s awaiting them and they have a responsibility on staffs.”
Locksley, Alabama’s co-offensive coordinator in 2018, was one of several assistant coaches who departed Alabama for promotions elsewhere. Fellow co-offensive coordinator Josh Gattis and quarterbacks coach Dan Enos each accepted offensive coordinator positions at Michigan and Miami, respectively.
Embed from Getty ImagesLocksley would ultimately take the Maryland head coaching job a month after the LSU game that Saban reference. However, Locksley stayed on with the team and continued to coach through their National Championship Game loss to Clemson.
“I can sleep at night knowing we did a great job,” Locksley added. “We broke records there on offense. We gave ourselves a chance to win except one game, which I understand the expectation at Alabama is to win championships and we picked the national championship to not execute well.”
Interesting enough, Gattis, who made a last-minute change to Michigan after it was reported he was joining Locksley at Maryland, admitted in January that he was “chewed out” by Saban when he informed his former boss he was leaving for the Wolverines.
Also in January, it was revealed Saban was unaware of Enos leaving for Miami, even asking “Hey, where’s Dan?” during a staff meeting on Jan. 11, according to the Athletic.
While Mike Locksley was the only assistant on the staff who became a head coach, he told Giambalvo, there were “quite a few guys on our staff at Alabama that had opportunities to interview for head-coaching jobs.”
