Zac Alley was hired Monday as Oklahoma's defensive coordinator. On Alley's impressive background, why Brent Venables hired him to replace Ted Roof, and why this is such a massive decision for Venables and the OU program.
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00:00 What's up everybody? John Hoover, All Sooners dot com. Big day for the Oklahoma Sooners today.
00:06 Brent Venables has made it official. He has hired a new defensive coordinator and as we all know, as we all expected, his name is Zach Alley.
00:16 You already know Zach Alley is a young coach, 30 years old, and when he was hired a couple of years ago at Louisiana Monroe, he was the youngest defensive coordinator in all of FPS football.
00:27 You also already know that Alley is pretty much a Venables clone. He worked with Venables for seven years at Clemson as a student assistant, as a graduate assistant, and then last year he even told media in South Carolina before the Gamecocks played the Gamecocks.
00:43 He told the media, "I talk like Coach V and I coach like him." So an absolute Venables protege.
00:51 Well, what else can we learn about Zach Alley? I'd like to start with his coaching influences other than Venables and Dabo Swinney at Clemson.
01:00 These last two years he coached for Rich Rodriguez at Jacksonville State and before that he was defensive coordinator for Terry Bowden at Louisiana Monroe.
01:11 Before that he was linebackers coach and special teams coordinator for Brian Harsin for two years at Boise State.
01:19 And then before that he was on Swinney's staff that won two national championships.
01:25 He's got the lineage. There's some really impressive coaching names there.
01:30 The next question is, how's his coaching? Well, Jacksonville State this year went 9-4, first full season reclassifying to FBS.
01:40 And the strength of the team, the strength of the Gamecocks that this year was their defense.
01:45 Zach Alley's defense gave up just 21.2 points per game, which is tied for 32nd in the nation. So not bad.
01:53 They allowed just 111.5 yards per game on the ground, which ranks 14th nationally in run defense.
02:01 They did give up 241 yards per game passing, which is not good. 95th in the country in fact.
02:08 But Alley's defense produced a lot of big plays. They had 25 takeaways, which is tied for 8th nationally.
02:16 They were tied for 9th in the country with 16 interceptions. They were tied for 12th in the country in sacks, 2.92 per game.
02:25 They were number 17 in tackles for loss, 7.1 per game. So they make a lot of big plays. They make a lot of things happen.
02:32 They were 22nd and 3rd down conversion defense, just 32.7%.
02:36 And they were 33rd nationally in pass efficiency defense with a rating of 123.65.
02:44 So overall, Jacksonville State's defense gave up 352 yards, 352.8 per game, which ranked 42nd in the country.
02:54 How would you like some advanced statistics? How about this? Well, points per play, right?
03:00 Jacksonville State ranked 22nd in the country in points per play. Just .292 per play.
03:08 Points per play. Yards per point, 16.1. That's 26th nationally. Yards per play allowed, that's 13th nationally.
03:17 4.7 yards per play. So that's not bad at all.
03:22 Now, let's call it what it is here. Jacksonville State plays in Conference USA.
03:27 They recently reclassified from FCS. Their strength of schedule this year was 112th in the nation.
03:33 So, jumping up to Oklahoma, jumping up to the SEC in 2024, it's going to be a little bit different for Zach Alley.
03:41 I promise you guys, you're going to hear a lot of "football is football," right?
03:45 But is it really? When you're jumping from ULM and JSU to the SEC?
03:52 Alley's going to be scheming against some of the best head coaches and offensive coordinators in the country.
03:58 Guys who are very, very good at what they do. They're paid very well to do what they do.
04:02 And think about this. The pressure of coaching in front of 100,000.
04:07 It's going to be a little different, a little higher than the 18,000 folks that come to games in Jacksonville, Alabama, right?
04:12 So, now this season at Jacksonville State, the Gamecocks lost to the four best teams that they faced.
04:20 That was Coastal Carolina, Liberty, South Carolina, and New Mexico State.
04:24 Those were the four best teams, and they lost all four.
04:26 But, again, their defense was pretty good. They only gave up 3.2 yards per rush in those four games against four pretty good teams.
04:34 Alley himself was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
04:38 He was raised in Greenville, South Carolina.
04:40 He attended high school in Charlotte, North Carolina, Country Day School.
04:45 After high school, he joined Dabo Staff as a student assistant, and he was a grad assistant for four years after that.
04:53 He's been on a fast track ever since.
04:56 Speaking of fast tracks, right? As for how this all seemed to move so quickly, I think Venables explained it in his press release.
05:05 OU's defense wasn't good last year, right?
05:07 A lot like Jacksonville State, the Sooners produced a lot of impact plays, like interceptions, tackles for loss.
05:13 But they also gave up a lot of yards and big plays, and big plays in the passing.
05:18 Ultimately, they couldn't get stops in the fourth quarter at Kansas State and at Oklahoma State.
05:23 And then you saw it again in the bowl game against Arizona.
05:26 After the bowl game, which ended with another long touchdown drive late in the game, fourth quarter, Venables made the decision to replace Ted Roof.
05:36 Now, this is Venables' quote.
05:38 Venables said in the press release, "I told him, Ted Roof, Wednesday that I made a decision to go in a new direction at defensive coordinator
05:48 and offered him an opportunity to remain on our staff in a different role.
05:52 He explained that he has a deep desire to keep coaching and will look to do that at a different school."
05:59 So, the different direction he wanted to go, Venables, was Zach Alley.
06:05 He wanted to hire Zach Alley as his defensive coordinator.
06:08 Roof didn't want that.
06:10 Roof didn't want to sit by as an analyst or something like that.
06:14 But Venables basically made sure he had his guy locked up last week, long before he went to Roof and said, "I'd like for you to take a demotion."
06:24 But Roof didn't want the demotion, so he got fired.
06:28 And let's give Venables credit here.
06:30 The system that he put together in his first two years defensively, for Brent Venables' standards I'm talking about,
06:37 it wasn't working out.
06:39 And he made a move to fix it.
06:41 But now, think about it, it's vitally important that Venables cut the strings and let Zach Alley coach the defense.
06:50 Venables told us last year that he runs the defensive meetings during the week.
06:54 When's he got time to be a head coach if he's doing that?
06:58 Roof told us this year Venables has all the input he wants on game days.
07:03 So that extra involvement as the Sooners' kind of de facto defensive coordinator was ultimately to Oklahoma's detriment.
07:13 This program is a mammoth undertaking.
07:17 OU needs its head coach to be a head coach, not a default defensive coordinator.
07:22 Venables needs to have oversight on the offense and the defense, as well as the special teams.
07:29 He needs to be the CEO that he was hired to be and not spend his game days roaming up and down the sidelines
07:34 talking to defensive guys trying to dial up a blitz in the B-gap while the operation goes sideways.
07:40 I say that, remember those two sideline penalties in Lawrence and Stillwater?
07:44 One was actually on Venables, but they ultimately both fall on the head coach.
07:48 So this is a big moment for Venables and it's a big moment for Oklahoma football.
07:53 The SEC is, think about it, it's unforgiving.
07:56 Those guys will exploit every weakness.
07:59 So turning the defense over to Zach Alley, if that's what Venables ultimately does, he should,
08:04 then that's a big boy decision for Oklahoma's head coach.
08:08 I'm John Hoover. For more on Zach Alley and OU football, keep it right here at allsooners.com.