Cecil
writes:
We can only guess what Saban wants implemented now, or how flexible he will be in granting leeway to install something new. He can be flexible, which is why I never bought into the notion that some sort of philosophical discord was at the root of Sarkisian's departure.
While I do have some concern if Saban is too demanding and constricting on his OCs ... my larger concern about personality conflicts comes to mind with Cecil's latter point. If there was no philosophical discord, then what other objection would Sark have, if not personality? Some say, "But an OC job in the NFL is a no brainer!" I don't think so if the alternative is the OC job at Bama with the offensive talent we have stockpiled ... unless Saban is too smothering.
But if I had to guess, I'd say the question gnawing at Saban after Alabama's last-second loss to Clemson is how he could field a defense that was just about as good as you could possibly have in modern college football (and the 2016 defense was that) and still not win a championship or stop a final drive. Clemson was good, no mistake, but the Tigers were much better after Alabama's best defenders had been in the field for 100 snaps.
This is what I mean about the game changing in ways that make the "old school" approach suspect. I've posted this many times in the past, but if you can recruit ballers at QB, RB, and WR, you can worry less about competing against the elite programs like Bama which bring in the best linemen. You can develop an offensive strategy to compensate for being outmatched at the LOS. Sit back in shot gun, use wide splits in the OL, rely on your QB to run around and/or toss it up to your 6-3, 6-4, 6-5 WRs. This means that you're willing to abuse your defense by lengthening games, surrendering lots of points/yards.
But in this atmosphere of college post-season, defenses don't tackle well anyway. So a Clemson-type team is deciding to put all their chips in their Heisman-quality QB and blue-chip WRs. Other commentators have already begun saying that the longer the season in college gets, the poorer the defenses perform because of the grind. Well this plays right into the hands of high-scoring offenses. And let's face it, we were two miraculous special teams plays away from losing the first time against Clemson.
Simply put, Saban's emphasis on defensive football works better in the olden days with shorter seasons.
The reason for that, paradoxically, was offense, not just the number of points scored but the ability to stay on the field, play physical football and complement the defense in that way. Look at Alabama's recent recruiting class and that seems to be where Saban is headed, not to some version of what Oregon once did. That doesn't answer the question of who might be the top candidate, but it does provide a signpost, possibly, to Saban's direction.
I've made the same observation. The quality of OL (if recruiting rankings matter) we have on our roster this season, the RBs, and the largest number of big TEs we've had since Saban has been here all points in the direction of returning to a 2-TE, 2-WR base set. Which I happen to prefer anyway. I always said back when we had AJ at QB, if only AJ could scramble and take off too, we've be unstoppable.
So I don't know. It will be interesting to see what transpires.
uke:Gosh, that was back in the early 2000's.
