Nick Saban is never satisfied with the status quo and, even after claiming yet another national title, the focus is on the 2018 season and beyond. To that end, word broke earlier in January that Penn State wide receivers coach Josh Gattis was ready to land in Tuscaloosa on Mike Locksley's new offensive staff and, on Wednesday, Gattis confirmed that buzz with an announcement of his departure.
Gattis is an up and coming coach in the industry and he was a two-time All-ACC performer as a player at Wake Forest. Since then, he spent four years at Penn State under James Franklin and, prior to that, he was under Franklin's tutelage at Vanderbilt for two seasons.
At the outset of Gattis' coaching career, he served as a North Carolina graduate assistant and, from there, he was at Western Michigan briefly before moving on to join Franklin at the past two stops. Given his young age (34) and the respect for Gattis' work around the college football world, it is not a huge surprise that he would be moving on to bigger and better things. Still, the opening had to be created in Tuscaloosa to make this happen and it will be (very) interesting to see how everything comes together on offense for the Crimson Tide.