Excerpt from an article on the Athletic about Bama.
Offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian, the Broyles Award winner as college football’s top assistant coach this season, also drew special notice from the coaches we spoke to. “A great play-caller,” said one coach. “I think he’s as good as Lane but without all the tweeting.
“DeVonta Smith is a stud, and Sark really knows how to get him the ball and attack your coverages. He’s great at finding ways to feed his star player the ball. That’s not always a given with a lot of teams.”
“I think what Sark has done a good job with,” says another SEC coach, “is he realizes that if I get them the ball in space quickly, every play is like a punt return. They’ve got great athletes and you can try to plan for it, but if you’re 8 to 10 yards away, you’re gonna struggle tackling these guys. So when they motion a guy or orbit motion a guy, you think, here comes the swing screen and you know what’s coming, but you can’t tackle him. You saw that against Notre Dame. They just couldn’t tackle those guys. Sark knows how to get their mojo going.”
Says an SEC East coach: “Sark does a lot of motions to set things up, and every single run has a play-action pass off it. You can’t rotate your safeties. They give you a lot of problems.”
Offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian, the Broyles Award winner as college football’s top assistant coach this season, also drew special notice from the coaches we spoke to. “A great play-caller,” said one coach. “I think he’s as good as Lane but without all the tweeting.
“DeVonta Smith is a stud, and Sark really knows how to get him the ball and attack your coverages. He’s great at finding ways to feed his star player the ball. That’s not always a given with a lot of teams.”
“I think what Sark has done a good job with,” says another SEC coach, “is he realizes that if I get them the ball in space quickly, every play is like a punt return. They’ve got great athletes and you can try to plan for it, but if you’re 8 to 10 yards away, you’re gonna struggle tackling these guys. So when they motion a guy or orbit motion a guy, you think, here comes the swing screen and you know what’s coming, but you can’t tackle him. You saw that against Notre Dame. They just couldn’t tackle those guys. Sark knows how to get their mojo going.”
Says an SEC East coach: “Sark does a lot of motions to set things up, and every single run has a play-action pass off it. You can’t rotate your safeties. They give you a lot of problems.”
