Alabama Football: Gauging the Sark-Saban offense will take time

The 2019 version of Alabama football offense may prove to be exceptional but coming to that conclusion will have to wait until at least November.

In a recent column, the Dean of Alabama football reporting suggested the standards for measuring Steve Sarkisian’s Crimson Tide success are both ordinary and excessive. In Cecil’s words, “every play that isn’t a touchdown” draws criticism.

As Cecil said, all Steve Sarkisian must do is produce a Heisman Trophy winner and be part of producing a National Championship. Then, and perhaps only then, will Sark’s coming season be deemed successful by Alabama football fans.

Sarkisian seems to understand the expectations. The pressure, so far, appears to be welcome. On Saturday, he said he had come into similar situations at USC and Atlanta. He cannot be blamed for the opinion, but no doubt he knows Pac 12 football and an NFL team with no Super Bowl success are not comparable to the ’14-1 sucks’ attitude associated with Alabama football.

Yes SEC football means more, and nowhere does it mean more than Tuscaloosa. Some of us longer-tusked Alabama football fans believe the Crimson Tide’s best-ever offensive coordinator was Homer Smith. At the least, Smith was the most cerebral.

In a best-of-all world’s scenario, Sark would be a mixture of Homer’s brains and Lane Kiffin’s flash, mixed with a ‘lay the wood and run it down their throats’ determination of Jim McElwain. As Cecil would say, we ask too much.

Determining how good Sark is will take time. Using the Sark philosophy of having the run set up the pass will work just fine in the Crimson Tide’s first eight games. Some teams, especially the defensive fronts of Duke and New Mexico State, will need to prioritize surviving the physical battle. There will immense hype about the Texas A&M game but as good as Mike Elko is, the Aggies will have to out-score, rather than stop the Crimson Tide.

In those first eight games, the only defense with an outside chance of slowing down the Sark, Crimson Tide offense is South Carolina. Stopping a ‘run to set up the pass’ offense usually requires defenses to load the box. For that to work, the box must be loaded with big, fast, mean dudes. TAMU does not have all the personnel needed yet.

South Carolina’s defensive line should be good, though not quite great and the Gamecocks will be just above average at linebacker. Still, before LSU and after, in the regular season, South Carolina has the best chance to slow down the Crimson Tide offense.

If the argument made above is correct, why would Sark show any wrinkles before LSU? The only reason we can see is to force opposing defensive coordinators to prepare for them. Or sometimes known as “now you see them, now you don’t.”