FSU Football: Will Coaching Carousel Cost Alabama Against FSU In September?
By Kelvin Hunt
FSU football will take on Alabama in the 2017 season opener. Will Alabama’s coaching carousel of late impact them against FSU?
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FSU football has had staff continuity under Jimbo Fisher during most of his tenure with most of the staff being onboard for the past three years or more.
Some view that continuity as a bad thing in some regard. I do agree the staff needs to get a bit younger for recruiting purposes. There are also a couple of coaching positions where FSU could stand an upgrade as well.
As of this writing, those same FSU coaches will be on the sidelines when they square off against Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide in the 2017 opener in Atlanta, Georgia.
That won’t be the case for Alabama as they’ll be on their third offensive coordinator in less than a year. It was announced Tuesday that Steve Sarkisian will leave Alabama to become the offensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons.
Sarkisian replaced Lane Kiffin for one game (National Title) after Kiffin left Tuscaloosa for the Florida Atlantic head coaching position.
Alabama also lost their wide receivers coach Billy Napier a couple of weeks ago as he’ll become the new offensive coordinator for the Arizona Wildcats.
My Thoughts
Listen, Nick Saban is the best coach in college football and it’s not really close. It’s a given that he’s going to make a solid hire. The rumor is that it’ll be Mike Locksley according to FanSided’s Alabama experts at Bama Hammer.
They have the best talent in college football and will always field one of the best defenses in the country.
However, Alabama will have a sophomore quarterback in Jalen Hurts that isn’t a good passing quarterback. Clemson was able to make Alabama one-dimensional in the title game, and FSU football will look to do the same thing.
Take away the run game and make Hurts beat you with his arm. We saw how that worked for Clemson as Alabama’s offense was anemic outside of a couple long Bo Scarborough touchdown runs.
How’s Hurts going to respond to a new face instructing him on what to do? How long will it take the new hire to assess what Hurts can and can’t do in his offensive scheme? How will the offensive unit as a whole react to the new hire?
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It probably won’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but you take any edge you can get against Alabama.
The clock is ticking to September!