It pulled quarterback Austin Mack from Washington, and now Kalen DeBoer has added his second player from the Huskies to his roster for the Crimson Tide. Parker Brailsford, an offensive lineman, committed to Alabama on Saturday. The 6-foot-2, 275-pounder is one of the top centers in college football. He guided Washington’s offensive unit to capture the Joe Moore Award in 2023, pushing the Huskies’ offense to 14 victories, a Pac-12 Championship, a win over Texas in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, and an appearance in the College Football Playoff National Championship Game against Michigan.

Brailsford protected Michael Penix to account for 4,903 passing yards and 39 total touchdowns.

He set up blocking schemes for Dillon Johnson to total 1,195 yards rushing and 16 touchdowns on 233 carries. Brailsford’s excellence up front helped Washington have two 1,000-yard receivers.

Rome Odunze had 1,640 yard and 13 touchdowns on 92 receptions. Ja’Lynn Polk turned in 1,159 yards and nine scores on 69 catches. Alabama fans are pumped up on social media to have a center that will lead the Tide back to a national title stage.

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Would Clemson Football be impacted the same as Alabama if Dabo Swinney retired?

The Crimson Tide has lost ten players to the transfer portal since Nick Saban retired. Would Clemson face the same consequences if Dabo Swinney decided to retire?

Clemson Football has been fortunate to have head coach Dabo Swinney for many years. During that time he has had much less turnover on his staff than most programs.

Alabama head coach Nick Saban had been with his program a long time as well. When he retired last week, the Crimson Tide athletic department moved quickly to find a new head coach.

They hired Washington’s Kalen DeBoer within three days. DeBoer has just led the Huskies to the national championship game. He seemed like a great hire to most observers.

No matter what outsiders think of the DeBoer hire, it hasn’t stopped players from deciding to move on to other programs.

Ten high-profile players have entered the portal since Saban’s announcement. This is in addition to the twenty that were already in the portal before Saban retired.

Most of the players that were in the portal already weren’t expected to be impactful departures for the Tide, but the ones who have left since are a different story.

Julian Sayin was the highest-rated quarterback in the 247Sports Composite for the 2024 class. Caleb Downs was a freshman All-American safety for Alabama this past season. Isaiah Bond and Kadyn Proctor are both rated as 5-star transfer prospects by 247.

Of the ten departures, only one is rated as less than 4-stars by 247.

This comes as a surprise to many who assumed that Alabama was too strong of a program to suffer these kinds of losses, even under such circumstances, but it is a testament to how strong some players feel their resumes are tied to the resumes of the coaches around them.

For Clemson fans, it makes one wonder what the impact would be if Swinney elected to retire or leave the program.

On the surface, it doesn’t seem like that is something we would have to worry about any time soon. Swinney is just 54 years old, far from Nick Saban’s age of 72.

However, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Take Oklahoma’s Bob Stoops for example. He was just shy of his 56th birthday when he elected to retire from his post as the head coach of the Sooners. He did return for a brief interim period when Lincoln Riley left for USC and he coached in a minor league, but he hasn’t shown any desire to get back into coaching.

One of the things we have heard since Saban retired is that the ‘business’ of the new age of the transfer portal and NIL was one of the things that he did not like.

We can infer that Swinney is not a fan of the ‘transactional’ nature of college football either. He shows no signs of slowing down, but it is hard to predict how his enthusiasm may change in the coming years.

Would Clemson suffer the same fate as the Crimson Tide should Swinney decide to enjoy his retirement or take a job in professional football? There are arguments for both outcomes.

Swinney has tried to build his program with a different kind of chemistry than most others. This has led to criticism in many respects, but it has statistically yielded a program that is less susceptible to annual turnover due to both the transfer portal and early entry to the NFL.

Would the chemistry Swinney built help prevent mass departures from star players of Swinney left? This would probably depend on who Clemson hired to succeed him. If they hired from within and the new head coach was someone the players knew would maintain the same strategy for building the program (maybe Nick Eason?), it would probably decrease the risk that the Tigers would lose key talent.

While this could decrease the risk, it would not eliminate the risk in this day and age.