Sarkisian will join the staff at Alabama as an offensive analyst, the team confirmed Monday. Notre Dame’s 51-0 romp in 1966 is preserved.
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After punting on four of the first five offensive series, the other series ending in a fumble, Alabama rolled off scoring drives on seven of its next eight offensive series before punting on its second-to-last offensive series.
“We’re going to continue to help him in his program as an organization, and we’ll support him”, Saban said.
“Hopefully it’s a statement we’re still going to fight, still going to play”, Stewart said about the team’s performance.
The season-opening win came at AT&T Stadium – the home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys – was also where the Crimson Tide started their 2012 and 2015 national championship seasons with victories. With Saban saying he may do something “different” this week, that could imply Hurts will become the first true freshman Saban has started at quarterback at Alabama, but Saban didn’t commit to that.
Stewart was wide open in the end zone behind the secondary when Hurts hit him for a 39-yard score midway through the second quarter that made it 7-3 and put Alabama ahead to stay.
That was it. Opportunity botched and the game completely imploded. That gave Bama a 17-3 halftime lead.
Redshirt freshman Blake Barnett got the start against the Trojans, but Hurts replaced him in the first quarter.
“Look, I’m happy that we won”, Saban said. “We started the way we wanted to start”.
The biggest game in college football was the #20 USC vs #1 Alabama game.
Sarkisian, who sought treatment amid the controversy and checked into rehab, previously served three seasons at USC as an offensive assistant and quarterbacks coach before spending 2004 as the Oakland Raiders’ quarterbacks coach.
The Trojans finished with six penalties, all of which seemed impactful. He ran nine times for 32 yards. “It changes a bunch of little things”. Obviously he is happy that the Tide crushed USC but he is more concerned with how his team played.
It’s fair to assume that he’s talking about USM’s 44-35 win at Kentucky and USA’s 21-20 shocker at Mississippi State on Saturday.
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Where do the Trojans go from here? Alabama is making decisions “for now”, and “for now”, Hurts is just good enough to firmly grasp the Alabama starting quarterback job. “They do things to take away what you can do, and you have to be able to improve through that as a player, whether it’s individually or collectively as a unit, so that you can continue to have success and not get taken advantage of”.
