With Alabama football team's 2019 preseason practice now underway, it's time for a new edition of The 3-2-1, where we share three things we've learned, two questions we're asking, and a prediction.
In this installment, we'll take a closer look at how the new assistant coaches are fitting into place, discuss Sarkisian’s offensive approach, as well as talk about fall camp position battles.
Three Things We've Learned
1. Saban is very pleased with the new assistant coaches
Alabama has seven new assistant coaches going into the 2019 season: Steve Sarkisian (new offensive coordinator), Kyle Flood (new offensive line coach), Charles Huff (new running backs coach), Holman Wiggins (new receivers coach), Brian Baker (new defensive line coach), Sal Sunseri (new outside linebacker coach), and Charles Kelly (new safeties coach).
“I’m really pleased with the way the new coaching staff has come together,” said Saban during his first press conference of the season. “We have new leadership on both sides and those guys have done a really good job of developing relationships with the players, they are very knowledgeable, well organized, do a good of leadership, and the coaching staff has fell into place very nicely as well.”
Saban also promoted Pete Golding who was already on staff listed as a “inside linebackers coach/co-defensive coordinator” to defensive coordinator for this season. The offense has found a quick transition from last year’s offensive coordinator Mike Locksley as Sarkisian served as an offensive analyst at Alabama in 2016 before being promoted to the offensive coordinator at Alabama for the 2017 national title game.
Sarkisian then took the offensive coordinator job with the Atlanta Falcons and now finds himself back at Alabama with a quarterback he’s very familiar with in Tua Tagovailoa. Sarkisian recruited Tagovailoa when Sarkisian was the head coach at USC in 2015. “I’ve known Sarkisian ever since he was at USC as he recruited me,” said Tagovailoa during media day.
“Then, when he came to Alabama, he was helping out and still trying to recruit me to come to Alabama. When I came in, he was actually supposed to be the offensive coordinator, then he went to Atlanta.”
Tagovailoa also mentioned that before fall camp, him and Sarkisian got together for dinner to go over things Tagovailoa had seen from the guys during the summer in terms of development and leadership from the players.
2. Sarkisian’s offense philosophy is run first
Sarkisian was asked during media day about his offensive philosophy and despite inheriting the best receiving corps in the nation, Sarkisian spoke of the run first. “My philosophy starts with running the football,” Sarkisian said.
