Kalen DeBoer reveals JaMarcus Shephard's role at Alabama after taking Oregon State job

Oregon State parted ways with head coach Trent Bray following an 0-7 start to the season, opening up yet another head coaching vacancy in the sport of college football. Special assistant Robb Akey led the Beavers to a 2-3 record across their final five games.

It didn’t take long for the program to find its new head coach, as it announced last Friday that Alabama Co-Offensive Coordinator JaMarcus Shepard would be headed to Corvallis to assume the position. This move comes just a few days prior to Alabama‘s showdown against Georgia in the SEC Championship Game.

During his Monday media availability, Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer revealed Shephard’s role with the program heading into the postseason following his move to Oregon State.

“Yeah, he really wants to be a part of everything that we do throughout,” DeBoer said. “There’s a couple things here right now early in the week that he’s got to part as far as obligations with kind of getting things started there with his opportunity at Oregon State, which we’re super excited for. We celebrated it actually on Friday morning. He’s a guy that pours everything into this program.”

JaMarcus Shephard followed Kalen DeBoer to Alabama in 2024

“He’s poured everything into me,” DeBoer continued. “It’s something that our players know and feel. I’ve known Shep since 2014. You can’t help but be excited for someone that gets to run their own program. We did a quick little celebration for him before we got into meetings on Friday. He’s wanting to be a part of it as much as he can. I expect that, once we get to probably Tuesday, him to be with us the rest of the week getting ready for this game.”

Shephard is a long-time offensive name who has bounced around several staffs since 2011. That began with five years as a quarterback and a wide receivers coach at Western Kentucky under coaches Willie Taggart, Bobby Petrino, and Jeff Brohm.

He then spent a year at Washington State as a receivers coach under Mike Leach before spending five more years under Brohm at Purdue as a receivers coach, passing game coordinator, and eventually a co-offensive coordinator for the Boilermakers. That’s when Shephard eventually ended up with DeBoer, with several responsibilities on offense, while also being assistant head coach, at Washington and now Alabama.

He now inherits an Oregon State program that has gone just 7-17 over the past two seasons following Jonathan Smith‘s hire at Michigan State.

On3’s Sam Gillenwater contributed to this article.