Steve Sarkisian describes his offensive philosophy heading into first season as Alabama OC
By Andrew Olson
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For years, “Run the damn ball!” has been a meme for describing what some Alabama fans want to see on offense from the Crimson Tide. Those fans are going to like Steve Sarkisian’s offense.
“Well I think it starts in running the football,” Sarkisian said Saturday when asked about his offensive philosophy. “In my opinion, every year I’ve called plays in college football I’ve always had a 1,000-yard rusher.”
With Damien Harris and Josh Jacobs now in the NFL, former 5-star recruit Najee Harris is in line to potentially become the next great Alabama running back and possibly rack up 1,000-plus yards in the process. While Harris might be able to be a workhorse back, Sarkisian will have him on a pitch count, or carry count if you will, at times.
“You know ideally we want Najee to be fresh and continue to get better as the season goes on, and later in the year,” Sarkisian during his media opportunity this weekend. “So, you manage those number of carries, importantly, as the games go. There may be games in which he is that total bell-cow and we have to go the way we need to go to do what we need to do to win the game. There may be other games in which it’s not as many. Maybe we do find ways to get him the ball in the passing game and different things.”
That doesn’t mean Sarkisian is going to turn prolific passer Tua Tagovailoa into a quarterback who just hands the ball off.
“The play-action pass game is a quarterback’s best friend to where defenses are trying to stop the run, and now you can create throwing lanes down the field for explosive plays,” Sarkisian said. “And then an efficient passing game, high percentage completion-type passing game where you get the ball in your playmaker’s hands in space to go create plays.”
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
