Sep thirty, 2021

  • Chris Low

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    Chris Low

    ESPN Senior Writer

    • College football reporter
    • Joined ESPN.com in 2007
    • Graduate of the Academy of Tennessee

  • Alex Scarborough

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    Alex Scarborough

    ESPN Staff Writer

    • Covers the SEC.
    • Joined ESPN in 2012.
    • Graduate of Auburn Academy.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Sometime Alabama quarterback Blake Sims can still remember the feeling of that November night back in 2014, when he and the criminal offence were standing on the field in overtime at LSU. With his mind and center racing, and the roar of the Tiger Stadium oversupply ringing in his ears, he shot a glance toward the sideline and Double-decker Nick Saban.

Less than 24 hours earlier, first-year offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin had come up with the play Sims was about to run -- a daring empty fix formation in which the offensive tackle, Cam Robinson, would split out wide equally a receiver and a 305-pound reserve tight end, Brandon Greene, would masquerade every bit an offensive lineman.

The play's name doubled as a sort of warning: Oh S---.

"Oh s---," Kiffin had warned Sims and the rest of the offense in their team meeting the night earlier, "if this doesn't piece of work guys, Autobus Saban is going to kill me on national Tv set."

No blood was shed. LSU didn't pick upward on the fact that Greene was actually an eligible receiver every bit he took off downwardly the centre of the field after the snap and hauled in a 24-yard reception on the kickoff play of overtime, leading to a 20-13 Alabama victory.

"We all would take gotten our asses ripped if that play would have gone bad, non just Coach Kiffin," said Sims. "Simply that's the style Coach Kiffin rolls. He wasn't agape to take chances, and Coach Saban wasn't agape to chance on him ... and yous see what that's led to."

Much like that play, the pairing of Saban and Kiffin was high-adventure at the time and genius in hindsight. And it has now come full circle, every bit Kiffin returns to Bryant-Denny Stadium to lead his No. 12 Ole Miss Rebels confronting Saban's No. ane Crimson Tide on Saturday.

But for the full story of how Alabama transitioned from ground-and-pound, game-manager-QB Alabama to loftier-flying, starting time-round-QBs-and-Heisman-winning-receiver Alabama, you have to starting time at the commencement, when the sport's most accomplished head motorcoach took a chance on the game's nigh controversial.

"I remember him proverb, 'I feel similar our offense is a Lamborghini, but it's headed off a cliff,' meaning we've got these not bad players, but are behind the times in what we're doing," said Kiffin, recalling their commencement coming together after he was hired. "So we needed to change directions."

When Auburn's Chris Davis caught a missed field goal and returned it more than 100 yards for a game-winning score confronting Alabama in the 2013 Iron Bowl, it did more than than dash whatever hope the Crimson Tide had of winning a third directly national title. Information technology was the final signal to Saban that his programme, despite its massive success, was beginning to abound outdated offensively.

While Auburn, Ole Miss and Texas A&M were using tempo and spreading the field with multiple receivers, Alabama was still putting the quarterback under eye and however utilizing a more often than not pro-style playbook.

Saban, after years of complaining about how the rules were tilted in favor of spread and hurry-upwardly offenses, was eager to play catch-up with what he called the "fastball guys."

So two weeks after losing to Auburn, an unlikely visitor started popping upwardly at the Alabama do field.

Centre Ryan Kelly barely noticed Kiffin hanging around those few days in mid-December. Former coaches were always coming and going, Kelly explained.

Speaking to reporters, Saban brushed off the importance of Kiffin'southward visit. Never mind that Kiffin was 1 of the near eccentric and divisive figures in college football. The 38-yr-former had recently been fired past USC and was only four years removed from bailing on Tennessee after just one season.

Saban said hosting Kiffin was an opportunity for "professional person evolution."

"Obviously," Kelly said, "that was the precursor to what was coming."

Sims, who was a backup at the fourth dimension just knew Kiffin from his recruitment by Tennessee, was one of the few players who put two and ii together.

"I said, 'We're about to exist deadly, so cold,' considering I knew what he would exercise with our offense," Sims said. "It was the perfect combination, Coach Saban'southward structure and Coach Kiffin's creative heed."

In the ensuing days, everything came together. Offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier told Sims and the rest of the criminal offence that the Carbohydrate Bowl would be his concluding game at Alabama. He would eventually state the same chore at Michigan.

During a recruiting visit, Saban pulled linebackers coach Lance Thompson into a bathroom for a private conversation. Thompson said Saban told him he had three candidates in mind to supersede Nussmeier. One of them was Kiffin, whom Thompson had worked for at Tennessee.

Saban asked Thompson, now the inside linebackers coach at Florida Atlantic, what he thought.

"I'd hire Lane, Motorbus," he said. "He'due south a special playcaller."

Thompson then paused for a moment. "Merely I'm going to tell you," he said, "he'southward different."

Saban didn't miss a beat.

"I ain't never had a problem handling an assistant coach," he said.

Saban would ultimately hire Kiffin and test his confidence about wrangling wayward assistants. Their personalities were and so far apart, Thompson said, "It was like Earth and Neptune."

Their collision caused fireworks at times, but more chiefly, it led to the total re-imagining of Alabama's criminal offence and the resurrection of Kiffin's career.

"People think you go there because it'south coaching rehab and yous get a caput chore somewhere else," Kiffin told ESPN before this week. "I guess that's 1 fashion to approach it, and some people exercise. Only for me, I look back at all of the things I learned under [Saban] that made me a meliorate coach despite everything that's been said about our time together and whatever differences we might accept had."

There were plenty of skeptics when Saban brought Kiffin on board.

"A lot of people might have been surprised when I brought Lane in equally coordinator, probably even hither in the building," Saban told ESPN. "But I wanted to grow on offense. Nosotros needed to grow, and I felt like he was the best guy at that time to help us do that."

Simply this wouldn't be a simple course correction. Because while Saban wanted to implement the spread and apply more than tempo, Kiffin had very little history of doing either. At Tennessee and USC, he had run a like pro-style attack every bit Alabama.

"He researched all that stuff and nosotros'd go over information technology," Saban said. "... Then I was kinda learning it from him, and he was learning it from other people."

For much of the side by side two years, Kiffin did his homework on those coaches and teams running up-tempo offenses with run-laissez passer elements (RPOs). He paid careful attention to what Steve Sarkisian, whom he worked with at USC, was doing as head omnibus at Washington, racking up more than 600 full yards of offense in a game five times during the 2013 season.

There were also talks with Tom Herman when he was the offensive coordinator at Ohio Country and Doug Meacham at TCU. Kiffin said he remained in touch with Chip Kelly, who was then in the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles after coaching against Kiffin while at Oregon.

That Apr, during Kiffin'south start jump at Alabama, the Ruby-red Tide hosted their almanac coaching clinic. There were a few usual suspects, such as former Alabama coaches Factor Stallings and Sylvester Croom, but among the headliners was someone with no ties to the school or Saban: Baylor coach and bustle-upwardly offensive guru Fine art Briles, who was later fired in response to a review of the school's handling of sexual attack allegations confronting students, including several football game players.

Thompson said Briles' attendance was no coincidence.

"There's not a jitney that comes to a dispensary that Nick doesn't sit downward with individually and talk to and the coaches on the offensive and defensive side of the ball talk to those guys, too," Thompson said. "Every passenger vehicle from another programme, every coach that's brought in for an interview, is brought in for a purpose."

That purpose: "To proceeds new data."

Saban and Kiffin left no stone unturned. In their second twelvemonth together, no-huddle guru Eric Kiesau was brought in on staff as an offensive analyst. Kiesau, now the receivers charabanc at Auburn, worked under Sarkisian at Washington and was previously the offensive coordinator at Colorado and passing game coordinator at Cal. He was a valuable sounding board for Kiffin on such things every bit using the sideline boards that aid teams go faster on law-breaking.

Alabama ran what was then a school-record one,088 offensive plays in 2015 subsequently running 1,018 the twelvemonth before. The Tide had non run more than 898 plays in a season the previous four years.

"Everybody says that I become through so many guys on criminal offense," Saban said. "Await, I learn from all of them. We went through a transformation when Lane was here ... intentionally. It was intentional. I wanted to, and he wanted to, too, and we've continued to build."

The transition wasn't seamless, though.

For case: Kelly remembers how frustrated he was when he found out Kiffin wanted to fleck the traditional way quarterbacks signaled for the snap with a voice control like "hike" in favor of clapping. Kelly said he allow it be known to his coaches, "How does this make sense? Like, anybody could exist clapping, right?"

"There was give and take," explained Kelly, who's in his 6th season with the Indianapolis Colts.

That applied to the staff'southward interaction with Kiffin, too.

1 time, Kelly recalled, he thought offensive line coach Mario Cristobal was going to lose it on Kiffin.

"He was so shut to walking into Lane'south role and strangling him," Kelly said. "Because they were going out to practice and there were five new plays we hadn't installed and no ane could find Lane."

Over time, Saban grew increasingly frustrated with what he said was a lack of system on Kiffin'due south part.

"I wanted things done a certain mode," Saban said. "I wanted the coaches to come across. I wanted everybody to have input, and that was non his style. Some of the other coaches complained to me nearly information technology, and I always said that Lane would be a much amend caput coach than an assistant because when you're a head autobus and you lot know what you lot want to practise and you've got organized people around you, yous really don't need to be that organized."

One banana on that staff joked: "Lane Kiffin and Nick Saban were a match. It just wasn't a friction match made in heaven."

When Kiffin arrived in Tuscaloosa, Blake Sims was no one's idea of a record-setting SEC quarterback.

AJ McCarron had simply left for the NFL and former Florida State quarterback Jake Coker had transferred in, becoming the odds-on favorite to kickoff.

The coaching staff loved Sims, merely if they're existence honest, Thompson said, they were surprised he beat out Coker and started a single game. Even Sims admits he was recruited to Alabama by Kirby Smart to play free safety.

"He'd been Scout Team Player of the Week more than than anybody in the history of Alabama football," Thompson said. "He had played running dorsum, safe, quarterback, broad receiver, fullback, tight cease. The child had played everything. He was such a wonderful kid. And and then Lane comes and does a great job giving him stuff that he can do."

Overnight, Sims transformed into a deft distributor of the football game, making the kind of quick decisions that allowed All-America receiver Amari Cooper and others to polish.

That was no blow. Thompson said that during the lead up to the season, Kiffin shortened the terminology of plays, cutting 10-word calls in half in gild to make things easier for anybody to understand, and Sims responded by passing for more yards (three,487) than everyone in the history of Alabama football game had passed for to that point.

Whereas the year before the playbook was the size of a novel, Kelly said, it was suddenly condensed into a unmarried chapter.

"To come across a guy who really earlier that played kind of a utility role turn into that," Kelly said of Sims, "that was plainly a lot of Lane's doing. He figured out, 'What's this guy's strengths and weaknesses? And let'southward play those advantages.' And that's ultimately what he did the unabridged time I was there my last two years."

Sims, who's now playing for the Spokane Stupor in the Indoor Football game League, would watch tape with Cooper and running back Kenyan Drake of those Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush-league USC teams when Kiffin was the Trojans' offensive coordinator.

"It was always amazing to me how he could run into one play on film and know immediately how to attack the defense," Sims said. "He could be standing on the field and run into things nobody else could."

In the Florida game that 2014 flavour, Kiffin pulled Sims and Drake aside earlier the game and devised a play for Drake to split out wide every bit a receiver and Sims to line up in the shotgun in an empty backfield. On the first play from scrimmage, Drake found himself matched against a linebacker and ran a slant-and-go road for an easy 75-yard touchdown reception.

Kiffin said they had never expert that "sluggo" road with Drake, just that he had this "weird feeling" that Florida would exist in man coverage.

"I thought about it at the last minute and we put it in in the locker room," said Kiffin, adding that Bush-league ran that similar play for a long touchdown against Notre Dame in 2004.

Sims said: "You merely didn't see Alabama doing that kind of stuff before, but Coach Kiffin was great at getting those matchups and finding ways to get his all-time players the ball."

As a playcaller, Saban said Kiffin is the all-time he's always been effectually.

"He sees how the defense is playing something and immediately knows," Saban said, snapping his fingers for emphasis, "what he wants to run confronting it."

Saban said it's overblown how much he and Kiffin sparred that beginning flavor when information technology came to football, and fifty-fifty Kiffin said his former boss is a much better listener than people give him credit for, at least in sure areas.

"On scheme, yes. But non when information technology comes to the structure of his program," Kiffin said. "It's hard to argue that, though. Look at his success."

Much similar the "Oh Due south---" play against LSU, Kiffin was renowned for coming up with plays, even on the 24-hour interval of the game, which fabricated it seem like sandlot football game at times. And aye, he felt the wrath of Saban, but it usually was worth it.

"Some people when you get into a very structured surroundings like that, and you're a little bit more of a color-exterior-the-lines guy, just sort of conform because they tin can't handle the force per unit area if it doesn't work," said i former assistant coach. "But Lane would colour outside the lines, and if ii things worked and two things didn't work, information technology wouldn't faze him mentally."

One of the areas where Kiffin and Saban clashed nearly oftentimes that first season came on resting players, especially during exercise, and cutting down on their reps later in the flavour.

"I didn't win many of those battles," Kiffin said. "Maybe the only one was with Amari Cooper. He was like a running back that year. He defenseless 124 passes [a school record]. I just wanted to make sure he still had his legs at the end of the flavor."

Saban admits that he's erstwhile-schoolhouse, but not to the point of being stubborn.

"I'm old-school when it comes to doing things right and existence disciplined, all that," Saban said. "I'm non sometime-school in the technical aspects of playing the game. In that location are differences, and I don't think people get that sometimes.

"And then I do listen. I mind a lot, listened to Lane [on Cooper]. That's how y'all learn. Now, there are some things I'm just not willing to compromise."

While there might have been some concession on Cooper and his reps that season, a coach on that staff said Saban is unwavering when it comes to practice.

"That wasn't going to alter, and it hasn't changed," the double-decker said. "And anybody who tells you it has changed is lying. The process is the procedure, and the way [Saban] develops his football team with practise reps is not changing. It wasn't Lane'due south call. It wasn't my call. It was Omnibus Saban'southward call.

"At present, do yous have the ability to become him to expand what his intent is? Yes. Lane got him to expand his thinking on certain things. Simply change? No."

In retrospect, Kiffin admits he might accept pressed too hard, besides fast, on some things.

"Like a lot of people practice with a previous marriage, I look back on my fourth dimension at present with Charabanc Saban differently," Kiffin said. "I could take done much ameliorate with just, 'Aye sir,' no matter what he said. That'southward the bulk of that building. They say, 'Yes sir,' no affair what. I guess my issue was that I wasn't trained that mode. I'd been a caput charabanc and an banana coach to Pete Carroll for half-dozen years. Pete Carroll was not a 'yes sir' environs at all. It was more than, 'Bring upwardly whatever ideas yous want.'"

The two coaches stood at midfield inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium after one of the virtually exciting games terminal season, Kiffin wearing an Ole Miss powder blue confront covering and shaking easily with his quondam boss, Saban, who was decked out in caput-to-toe Alabama gear.

For three-and-a-one-half quarters, they'd gone back and forth in an old fashioned shootout. The final score: Alabama 63, Ole Miss 48.

"That damn Lane, he said it after they played us last year: 'Everything I told him for iii years, he wrote information technology down,'" Saban would afterward say with a grinning. "He said afterwards the game, 'I did every one of those things in the game.'

"He had a whole notepad of s--- that I said was a problem to defend when we were together, and he said, 'I did every 1 of them.'"

The 2 teams combined for an SEC-record i,370 yards, and the 647 yards the Rebels churned out were the most ever against the Tide.

It was a make of football that would have been unrecognizable to Saban and Kiffin when they first joined up.

"We used to recruit against Alabama at USC and Tennessee and would say, 'You're a slap-up quarterback. Don't go there. Yous'll be a game managing director. You'll never put up large numbers,'" Kiffin said. "If you were a receiver, nosotros would tell them not to go there. Hither's Julio Jones, i of the greatest of all fourth dimension, and he never had more than 78 catches, but yet, Amari Cooper had 124."

In Kiffin's three years in Tuscaloosa, the Tide went 40-4 with three College Football Playoff appearances and 1 national title.

Of form, Kiffin didn't make it to Alabama'south national championship game that third twelvemonth, having been dismissed past Saban before in the calendar week. Kiffin had taken the caput task with Florida Atlantic, and Saban felt he wasn't paying enough attending to his Alabama task later the Tide scored merely ii offensive touchdowns and freshman quarterback Jalen Hurts threw for just 57 yards in a 24-7 national semifinal win over Washington.

"You await back and encounter where you lot were at error and what I could take done better," Kiffin said. "Now I find myself, which is like a kid saying and doing the aforementioned things his parents did, sounding a lot like Coach Saban."

When Kiffin left, Alabama's offense simply got scarier under future offensive coordinators Mike Locksley and Sarkisian. The plan produced outset-round quarterbacks in Tua Tagovailoa and Mac Jones, who put up record-setting numbers when throwing to game-breaking, first-round receivers like Jerry Jeudy, Henry Ruggs III, Jaylen Waddle and final year'due south Heisman winner, DeVonta Smith.

As one longtime staffer said, "There'south a narrative out there that the Alabama offense exploded nether Lane, and he was a big role of where it is now. But the explosion came nether Locks and Sark. But look at the numbers over the concluding few years."

Alabama has finished in the top three in scoring crime each of the past iii years and sixth or ameliorate in both total offense and passing offense the past three years. Of course, it has done information technology with 3 straight quarterbacks drafted in the first round and nine running backs, receivers or tight ends selected in the kickoff three rounds of the past iv drafts.

Most in and effectually the program at that time also agree that Kiffin'south offenses helped to attract more elite skill people.

"I do experience like the numbers we put up and what we started to do on offense made it more attractive for offensive skill players to come up from all over the state because they always got great defensive players," Kiffin said.

Just look at Alabama'south current quarterback: Bryce Young, a former five-star prospect from California. Young'south father said they didn't take Alabama seriously every bit a destination until they saw the offense begin to open up upward with Tagovailoa at quarterback. Immature's peak receivers are John Metchie Iii, who is from Canada, and Jameson Williams, a Missouri native who transferred from Ohio Country.

Kiffin enters Saturday's matchup with another some other California quarterback, Matt Corral, who is lighting up the scoreboards with xiv touchdowns in three games and is the new Heisman forepart-runner.

Ole Miss leads the country in scoring offense (52.7 points per game) and total offense (638.3 yards per game), while Alabama isn't far behind with 46.5 points per game.

And now Kiffin has a chance to brand good on an former hope when he returns to Tuscaloosa for the commencement fourth dimension equally an opposing head jitney since 2009, his lonely year at Tennessee. After the Vols pushed the Tide to the brink before losing, 12-10, the self young Kiffin met Saban at midfield.

"Practiced game, but we'll go y'all the side by side fourth dimension."