Sam Shade never thought he wanted to be a coach, now he’s trying to lead Alabama A&M back to being a SWAC powerhouse

NORMAL, Ala. (WHNT) — Sam Shade had just finished his eight-year NFL playing career and returned home to put his finance degree from the University of Alabama to use.

Although several of his professional coaches had prodded him to consider coaching, he didn’t have any interest. Shade always thought coaches worked too much, and he had no interest in that. The Birmingham native moved home and was ready to start life after football, not knowing his second football life was about to begin.

“I got my insurance license and was trying to dibble and dabble in that and financial services,” Shade said. “A good friend of mine that I actually played with at Alabama actually got me to volunteer to coach on the middle school level.”

Shade volunteered his time to coach the young athletes, but quickly found a passion in doing it and got hooked.

“That’s when I realized there was something to coaching that I just couldn’t get away from,” Shade said.

Shade’s football journey began in the Birmingham area when he was around the age of five, watching his older brother play. At the time, you had to be seven to play football, and Shade says by the time he was old enough to play, he was chomping at the bit to get on the field.

As he got older, Shade played at Wenonah High School, where he was a standout on offense, defense and special teams. He was highly recruited but ultimately chose to go to the University of Alabama.

“It was close to home at the time, you know back then you didn’t have Facetime and all that stuff,” Shade said. “It was close to home, I had family members that were big fans of the Tide and at the time I felt more comfortable there than some of the other places I had visited.”

Shade’s career with the Tide got started sooner than he imagined. He says he expected to be redshirted his freshman year after moving to the defensive side of the ball. Shade began getting playing time with the second team at corner and safety on a successful Alabama team.

The following season in 1992, Shade became a full-time starter. The Tide, led by legendary coach Gene Stallings, went 13-0 and won the national championship.

“There have been some more talented teams that have played at the University of Alabama, but I think what made that team really special is that we had a bond because actually back then we all lived in the same dorm, we had athletic dorms,” Shade said. “We all lived together unless you were married, that’s the only way you didn’t leave in the dorm so we had a really, really tight-knit group.”

After being named a captain his senior year in 1994, Shade was selected in the fourth round of the 1995 NFL Draft by the Cincinnati Bengals. He had a successful NFL career before picking up coaching as a volunteer.

Following that volunteer coaching gig, Shade had stops at Samford and Georgia State as an assistant. Along the way, he realized he wanted to become a head coach.

“I didn’t want it to happen overnight. I knew there would be a process to it, I didn’t know how I would do it, I was really thinking about being a head coach in college at some point,” Shade said.

Then, Shade got fired. He had joined the 2018 Cleveland Browns staff as an assistant special teams coach. The season prior, Hugh Jackson and the Browns had gone 0-16. Shade says he knew when he took the job that if the team didn’t get off to a hot start, his time in Cleveland would be short-lived.

 The team started 2–5–1, and Jackson got canned. But, in the coaching profession, getting fired is a rite of passage, and Shade knows that.

“I’ve always said, I try to do the best job that I can do, I’ve always done that,” Shade said. “If it’s not good enough and I’m asked to leave, then hey, I’m going to shake your hand like a man and look you in the eye and say thank you for the opportunity and move on.”

After his time in Cleveland, Shade returned home to Birmingham and took a year off from coaching to spend time with family. But his absence from the game wouldn’t last long.

In 2020, he became a head coach for the first time in his career at Pinson Valley High School. Shade found success immediately while coaching a talented roster that included fellow Alabama great Ga’Quincy “Kool-Aid” McKinstry. The Indians won the 2020 6A State Championship.

That success led to Shade being hired as the head coach at Miles College, where he quickly found success again, winning 10 games in his second season in charge of the program.

Shade says he’s not sure what to attribute his ability to have quick success to other than who he is as a person.

“I’m just a guy that I feel like I’ve got a really good work ethic. I don’t listen to the outside noise,” Shade said. “I’m going to do it the way that I know how to do it and if it’s good enough, great, and if it’s not good enough, then thank you.”

Last December, Alabama A&M fired Connell Maynor after seven seasons on the Hill. Shade said when the job came open, he knew he not only wanted to make the jump to Division I coaching, but he also wanted to coach in the SWAC.

“The SWAC, I feel like, is really good football,” Shade said. “Historically, there’s been a lot of great players that have played in this conference, there’s a lot of NFL Hall of Famers and first round draft picks, a lot of Hall of Fame coaches have coached in this conference, and so just that part of it, the competitive side in me looked at that and said I want to be apart of that.”

Shade says when he got to A&M, the program wasn’t that far off from being where he wants to be, pointing to the fact that in 2024, the team lost four SWAC games by an average margin of seven points a game.

Off to a 4-3 start in his first season, Shade says the program still isn’t where he wants it to be, but that he has to continue to remind himself that it’s still just year one of his tenure and the Bulldogs have been riddled with injuries.

The Bulldogs are in the midst of the bye week, in which Shade hopes they can get healthy as they gear up for the Magic City Classic with Alabama State.

“Alabama State’s a really good football team,” Shade said. “They are a play away from basically being undefeated in the SWAC and basically leading the East. It went down to the wire with those guys and Jackson State, but Alabama State’s been playing some really good football all season long, and so we are going to have our work cut out for us.”

A win in his first year in the classic would be a feather in his cap and a major step towards what Shade hopes to do for the program, which is making it a powerhouse in the SWAC again. If his track record is an indication, the team could be there quickly.

After all, Shade’s ascent from his first head coaching gig to being a Division I head coach took just under five years, not bad for a guy who never wanted to do it in the first place.