Alabama made an unusual coaching change before Monday’s National Championship loss against Clemson. The Tide moved on from offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin a week before the game, with Kiffin leaving earlier than planned to take over as the head coach at Florida Atlantic. Enter new coordinator Steve Sarkisian, the former USC coach.
Nick Saban stood up for Steve Sarkisian’s offense after Alabama lost to Clemson
Bama lost, but Saban pointed out his offense scored a lot more points against Clemson than Ohio State did.
Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images
The results: 31 points and 376 yards of offense (5.7 per play) in a losing effort in a title-game rematch. Alabama’s had games both better and worse than that.
Here’s all Nick Saban had to say about his coordinator change at his postgame press conference:
I think the players handled it very well. I think we scored 31 points in the game, which I think was pretty good against a pretty good defense that actually shut out Ohio State last week. I think we had some drops. I think we had some tipped balls. I think there was things that we could have done better.
But I thought the preparation was good. I thought the organization was good, and I thought we gave our players a chance in this game to have success. Was it challenging? Yes. Did everyone involved handle it extremely well? Absolutely.
Because Bama lost, Sarkisian will be armchair coordinator’d for a long time to come. That may or may not be fair. Saban’s point about doing 31 points better than Ohio State is a valid one, though Virginia Tech scored four more points against Clemson in the ACC Championship Game than the Tide did on Monday.
The yards-per-play number was below Bama’s closing season average of 6.5 but an improvement from 5.1 in the Peach Bowl semifinal, Kiffin’s last game.
True freshman quarterback Jalen Hurts threw 31 passes and only completed 13 for 131 yards. Bama went from 21 rushing attempts in the first half to 13 in the second half, despite hovering between 6 and 7 yards per rush and having a lead for most of the half. That doesn’t look great, but, Bama was without injured running back Bo Scarbrough down the stretch. Maybe that explains the shift to the pass.
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