“From now on, there will be only one voice”. The Kiffin-Saban relationship, while fruitful for both, was never meant to be everlasting. That’s not the way Saban works.
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“I realized when I hired you that you were young and inexperienced and that there would be a learning process for you”, he read.
Per the released statement, Saban said the decision was mutual and was made to allow Kiffin to focus exclusively on his new head-coaching duties. Kirby Smart did it last winter and used multiple phones to keep things straight as the ‘Bama defensive coordinator and incoming coach at Georgia.
Again, credit Washington for being more prepared on defense, but you could tell Kiffin’s preparation on Washington wasn’t up to snuff and a lot of the calls he made in that game were mind-boggling bad. He also mentioned that he wouldn’t be taking that part of his experience to FAU.
And unlike most new OCs, he isn’t being asked to make his debut in a meaningless September game, the national championship is on the line. It was not clear if Kiffin was still on campus at the time. Perhaps the trauma of that convinced Saban that a change might be able to stop Christian Wilkins and Ben Boulware from doing to Alabama’s offense next week what Deshaun Watson and Hunter Renfrow did to Alabama’s defense past year. “Three years is like 21”. Here’s what Saban said on Monday was the reason for the split. Kiffin, per Brett McMurphy, had been late to meetings and missed team buses leading up to the game – slippage that does not fly under Saban’s meticulous watch.
The timing of the move comes as a surprise as it has been made one week before the Crimson Tide are to play Clemson for the national championship. Last week, it was not amusing.
Alabama struggled to sustain offense against Washington in the Peach Bowl semifinal, with an unbalanced offensive attack.
A five-star recruit out of high school in Florida, Scarbrough suffered three major injuries before he arrived at Alabama, and then tore his ACL in April 2015, appearing in just four games as a freshman, while receiving just 18 carries.
I reached out to some people at Alabama on Monday and the feedback I got was that this was something that had to be done. Splitting time between two jobs is tough for anyone. We’re not entirely too sure what happened behind the scenes here, but it’s safe to say some drama might have unfolded between Kiffin and head coach Nick Saban. The transition from Kiffin to Steve Sarkisian, the one-time coach and Kiffin’s successor at USC, could benefit from the fact that Sarkisian has been on the staff for several months already.
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This is good news for Clemson in my opinion. The habits and the flow of communication that built all season, the shorthand between an offensive coordinator and his quarterback, has become subject to variance that Saban surely did not want.
