Alabama Football: Steve Sarkisian Offense (New Texas Football Coach)

hey football fans and welcome to the coordinator project in this video we're looking at steve sarkeesian who was alabama's offensive coordinator in 2020 but will be the head coach at texas in 2021 throughout the offseason i'll be hitting coordinators from all over the country though so be sure to subscribe to the channel and ring the bell to get notified whenever a new breakdown posts let's get into sarkeesian's offense by taking a look at where it came from when you look back at his formative years as an offensive coach the first thing that stands out is his truly meteoric rise in 1999 he was playing quarterback in the cfl and within two years he was leading a usc quarterback room that had guys like carson palmer matt liner and matt castle in it so how does the three-year cfl quarterback get his hands on two future heisman winners just two years into his coaching career the answer to that question goes through norm chow and through the byu school of offense more generally sarkeesian played for chow at byu in 1995 and 96 where he led the nation in passing efficiency as a senior and broke the school completion percentage record set by steve young more than a decade earlier when chao got hired as usc's offensive coordinator in 2001 then he gave his former star quarterback his first big break bringing him on as the trojans quarterback coach and to this day sarkeesian says that he's still running some of the same concepts that he coached for palmer and liner back in the early 2000s the development of that byu offense is absolutely fascinating and talking a little bit about it gives us a nice window into the earliest layers of sarkeesian's passing game in the time that norm chow was an assistant to byu he participated in the rise of a tremendously influential school of offense pioneered by doug scoval who was hired as the cougars offensive coordinator in 1976. leading up to that year byu had been a pretty mediocre whack team and head coach level edwards was sick of running a conventional ground-based attack that couldn't seem to be more talented teams when edwards hired scofield in 1976 he specifically wanted to reinvent the offense to bring it in line with some of the more progressive developments that were happening with the pro passing game more specifically he wanted an offense that could control the ball with the pass and forced the defense to defend the entire field especially from sideline to sideline it was scoville's job then to develop this offense and he did it by taking inspiration from a then veteran nfl coach and passing game innovator named sid gilman what gilman realized is that if the defense is playing a zone coverage where defenders are responsible for areas instead of receivers then it's possible to use multiple receivers to stretch those zones and force the defense to cover more guys than they actually can this seems obvious and at this point it's become a big part of every kind of passing game but at the time it revolutionized offensive football scuffles byu offenses took this concept and ran with it specializing specifically in what they called oblique stretches which work to create three on two triangles at weak spots in the coverage we can get an idea for how these stretches work on this play from alabama's game against georgia up here at the top of the screen alabama has a split out running back and two tight ends giving them three receiving threats to the left side of the formation on the defensive side however we see that georgia only has two potential coverage defenders outside toward the perimeter and so that's the part of the field where alabama will be able to get good numbers to do this the running back's going to get rid of one of those two defenders by going vertical this will make him the top point of a three receiver triangle on this play the cornerback's going to run deep with that vertical threat and that's going to leave just this outside linebacker on the edge alabama's then going to put a stretch on him by running to the flat with their wing tight end and then running it out with their inline tight end forming the two bottom points of that triangle the quarterback isn't going to target this stretch on this play because george is running a blitz and that triggers a hot read but if we pause the play right here we can see that the flat route has pulled the outside linebacker wide and that this has opened up space for the out route to the inside if the outside linebacker would have instead sat on that out then he wouldn't have been able to cover the flat and so this means that that guy really can't be right no matter what he does this is exactly the kind of thing that you would have seen from the byu offense starting in the late 70s and early 80s when they were pumping out first round draft picks like mark wilson jim mcmahon and steve young as well as heisman trophy winner ty dapmer the ultimate goal with that byu system was to control the ball with a short simplified passing game that's the earliest layer of sarkeesian's offense but it's definitely not the only or even the dominant one and this brings us to another layer which came from sarkeesian's ear with the raiders coaching quarterbacks under offensive coordinator norv turner well the byu offense was predicated around controlling the ball with the pass keeping things simple and taking whatever the defense gave them turner belonged to a more vertically oriented school of offense known as the air core yell system and sarkeesian specifically credits turner for some of his play action concepts i don't know if he got the specific play that we're about to see from turner but this is definitely the kind of play action concept that you'd see in that offense with at least one important twist the twist here which definitely wouldn't have been around with the raiders in 2004 is the backfield set where alabama's put their quarterback and running back in the pistol with the quarterback in the shotgun and the running back directly behind him we can see the reason for this if we run it forward just a bit when the running back lines up behind the quarterback like this it lets the offense create the same kind of back to the defense play fake that you would otherwise normally get with your quarterback under center sarkeesian will put his quarterback under center in short yardage situations but for the most part in 2020 he got this kind of hard play action fake out of the pistol as for the passing concept it's pretty simple alabama is lining up with her wide receivers in a stacked alignment and four displaying cover two over the stack so the cornerback here will defend any outside route the slot defender will take any inside route and the safety will play as a deep half defender over the top to take anything vertical to attack this coverage the receiver on the ball is going to run a dig over the middle as we've just seen the slot defender will be responsible for taking away this inside breaking route and so the dig's going to keep him occupied the receiver off the ball is then going to run a post which will attack the middle of the field behind that slot defender this is a great route against this coverage because it's going to break away from that cornerback who's sitting outside and it's going to break underneath of the safety who's playing over the top from here this becomes a very simple read for the quarterback all that he has to do is key that slot defender if that guy sits on the dig as he does right here then you just throw the post behind him if that guy would have instead dropped to take away the post then you come back to the dig underneath of him this kind of play shows us a second important layer to sarkeesian's offense there are no triangles here and there aren't a bunch of receivers out in the pattern trying to force the defense to defend from sideline to sideline this is just a downfield two on one play action stretch on the slot defender with the last two plays i've talked about mentors that sarkeesians coached under but at this point his career he's been a play caller for 14 years and his offense has developed in important ways over that time in fact the new features that he's added since then even more than his early offensive influences make up the bulk of his system today and help us define his offensive philosophy so now let's focus on defining what steve sarkeesian's alabama offense actually was in 2020 the first thing to know about this offense is that it's really built around an aggressive downfield passing attack with a lot of work getting done in the 10 to 20 yard range with run after the catch potential while sarkeesian's play calling was balanced in 2020 and even skewed toward the rung game his passing game finished third in the country in yards per game was one game finished just 47th so while the play calling may have been balanced the passing game was a lot more effective alabama obviously had talent at every level of the offense and so some of this is coming from scheme sarkeesian's offense has a lot of interesting ideas in the passing game but the run game is more straightforward at least by 2020 standards on this play let's take a look at a passing play that represents sarkeesian's offense to me here alabama's in a tight bunch set with three receiving threats compressed to the left side of the formation the concept that sarkeesian is called here is absolutely fantastic against the coverage that george is running there's a lot that we could get into about george's coverage rules here but to keep it simple let's just say that everything is going to come down to this weak side safety the quick version of his job is that with three receiving threats lined up away from him and just one receiver lined up to his side he needs to check for one of those strong side threats to attack back across the formation toward him on a crossing route this is why after the snap we see that he's caught toward that side of the field looking for a receiver to potentially add into his side of the formation the important thing here is that he doesn't get that threat at least not initially he sees the number one receiver stemming to the outside and away from him the middle receiver is going vertical and the tight end staying into block he's not threatened by a crossing route so that tells him to look for a second job which is to work with the cornerback to his side to create a bracket on the only receiver there on this play that receiver is running a curl and so that safety is going to nail down on him if we pause the play right here we see that that wide receiver is double covered with the safety to the inside and the corner back on the outside so the coverage rules to this side have worked out pretty well the problem though is the circ is bringing a crossing route over it's just coming late to understand what's happening here let's look back to the strong side of the formation this is the side with a bunch receivers and george has chosen to defend them with a four on three structure again to simplify the coverage rules georgia has a cornerback and a safety to take any two receivers vertical they've then got a nickel back to defend the curl and flat zones underneath of them and then a linebacker defending anything coming back to the inside this play is going to depend on alabama's wide receiver being a better athlete than that linebacker after the snap we see that that receiver is going to push vertical it's the linebacker's job then to wall him off from the middle of the field and to force him outside where georgia has that cornerback and safety that i mentioned earlier the problem here is that this is an athletic mismatch for that linebacker if we run this forward just a bit more we see that that wide receiver has been able to get a step on him climbing over the top and getting back into the middle of the field now that we understand george's coverage rules a little bit we can see why this is a huge problem if we pause the play right here we can remember that against this route combination georgia's weak safety is responsible for nailing down on the curl by this receiver right here creating that inside outside bracket with the cornerback when he sits on this route though it opens up space behind them and what's effectively happened here is that sarkeesian's been able to isolate the crossing receiver on a linebacker in a clear athletic mismatch with no safety help over the top on this play the quarterback happens to throw the ball a little too short into the inside but we can imagine that if he'd hit his receiver in stride maybe right about here then not only would this have been a nice reception but there'd also be a lot of room for him to run after the catch this is the kind of thing that really stood out to me about sarkeesian's 2020 offense another feature of this offense is that it relied a lot on motion and shifting with some kind of pre-snap action happening on well over half of its plays sarkeesian's offenses use a lot of one and two tight end sets and those tight ends play a big role in all of that motion and shifting on this play for example alabama wants to run toward the right to the wide side of the field they've got a problem though they've started out in a two by two spread formation and so they only have their five offensive linemen in the box's blockers meanwhile on the other side of the ball georgia has six defenders to solve this problem stark's going to use motion by this tight end who started the play split out wide before the snap he's going to bring him into the box making him a sixth blocker to match the defense's six defenders after the snap that guy's going to lead up to the backside linebacker cutting him off from the right side of the formation and allowing this run to get to the play side as we can see right here without that tight ends block this backside linebacker would have easily been able to make the play and so motioning that guy into the box is really the thing that makes this play work of course it's often easy to oversimplify this kind of thing obviously motioning in an extra blocker will let you take out one extra defender defenses aren't stupid though so they're going to have responses of their own to this kind of motion if we look at the pre-snap movement one more time we see that when alabama motions this tight end into the box this safety is going to move into the box to match him so alabama technically hasn't solved anything before the motion they were down five on six and now they're down six on seven there is something here that's more favorable to the offense after the motion happens though when we look at the alignment of that safety that's worked into the box we see that he's playing really loose much looser than that linebacker that the tight end is going to block on this play alabama's running away from that safety and so even though he is quote unquote in the box he's not going to be able to make an impact on this play the real question then is why is his alignment so loose and the answer to that question lets us get into one of the most publicly discussed aspects of steve sarkeesian's alabama offense the rpo or run pass option game to see how this works let's watch this play one more time but let's ignore the motion tight end and the running back and instead focus on heisman trophy winner devonte smith here on the backside of the run after the snap he's going to run a slant and if we pause the play right here we can see why the safety's playing without loose alignment by sitting outside and not attacking the line of scrimmage he's putting himself in position to cut that slant if the quarterback happens to throw it what this does though is makes him relate to the run that's working away from him in this frame right here we can see that he's still outside the hash after the ball is handed off if we run the play forward a little more we see that he's now started to pursue and that if he were a little bit earlier to the run then he might have been able to hold this to a four to six yard gain the problem with that though is that on these rpo plays alabama's quarterback is reading that specific player if we pause the play right here we can see that he's got eyes on him the quarterback only hands off on this play because he knows that the safety's slow playing the run but what would happen if the safety aggressively chased the run instead this play from the florida game gives a great example once again on this play we see that alabama has a tight end in the box giving them six blockers florida has six immediate box defenders and then the backside safety here is potentially a seventh defender that they can't block on this play unlike the last one that safety is going to step down into the box and work toward the line of scrimmage now remember that on these run pass option plays the quarterback is reading that safety and here we again see that he's got eyes on him as he's meshing with the running back when the quarterback sees that safety working downhill he knows that he won't be able to cut the slant which again is coming from devonta smith on the back side of this play because that safety is working downhill the quarterback pulls the ball and throws it picking up a nice gain people often associate rpos like this with spread offenses but really at this point they've become a staple at every level of football and sarkeesian's offense shows a largely pro-style approach to them in his offense the rpo is a tool not a primary mode of attack and at least some of that comes from his desire to have an effective play action passing game earlier in the video for example we saw alabama using a pistol alignment to create a true back to the defense play fake that only works though if you actually hand off to the running back on some of these plays on this play we'll see an actual handoff from the pistol with no option to pass after the snap the quarterback turns his back to the defense but this time it's just a straight hand off there's no pass option on this play and in fact there couldn't be because obviously when the quarterback has his back to the defense it's impossible for him to read a safety or a linebacker sarkeesian needs plays like this to set up his play action passing game though and so the rpo really can't be the engine that drives his offense as it is with more spread oriented teams instead it's just one of several different tools that he has for keeping the defense from loading up the box and that's much more aligned with current pro style approaches to the rpo at its core then sarkeesian's offense is a pro-style one-back offense that makes frequent use of one and two tight end sets his play calling aims from past balance but his 2020 offense was fundamentally oriented around the downfield passing game which was especially good at attacking the 10 to 20 yard range with run after the catch potential at the same time it does fold in a few elements of the modern rpo game although that ultimately doesn't take it too far from its pro style roots alright that's it for this video if you enjoyed it you might consider hitting the thumbs up button down below to like it the more likes the more youtube will recommend these videos to other people so it really helps to support the channel also if there's a coordinator that you want to see on here let me know in the comments and i'll see what i can do otherwise be sure to subscribe and hit the bell to get notified whenever a new breakdown goes up and i'll see you here next time