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Lane Kiffin jokes about having to talk about Alabama, avoiding Nick Saban’s ‘ass chewings’
By Keith Farner
Published:
Lane Kiffin opened his time at the podium on Monday at the SEC Media Days responding to the first question being about trick plays at Alabama. Kiffin, as he regularly does, commiserated with Georgia coach Kirby Smart.
“Like Kirby Smart used to say, you come up here and end up talking about Alabama, so first question is about Nick Saban, so that’s pretty usual,” Kiffin said. “Trick plays, offense has evolved so much from where we used to be that in a way, maybe you don’t run as many because we’re not quite the same as we used to be as far as setting things up as much because so much is about tempo and how we do things. So I would guess analytics on trick plays would show maybe we don’t do as many as we used to.”
Kiffin recalled how he went over trick plays with Nick Saban ahead of the game. For example, fake kicks featured a discussion leading up to the game.
“If they worked, he was happy. If they didn’t, you got ass-chewings,” Kiffin said.
Kiffin spent 3 seasons Alabama as the Tide’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach.
Here’s the Alabama portion of Kiffin’s Ole Miss bio:
His final season with the Tide, Kiffin mentored Jalen Hurts, the first freshman to start at quarterback in head coach Nick Saban’s career. Hurts finished 13-1 as the starting QB and guided Alabama to an SEC title and to the National Championship game. Hurts was a Freshman All-American, the SEC Offensive Player of the Year and the SEC Freshman of the Year. He was a finalist for the Manning Award, the Earl Campbell Tyler Rose Award, a semifinalist for the Walter Camp Player of the Year and the Davey O’Brien Award, presented annually to the nation’s top quarterback.
In 2015, Kiffin oversaw the development of quarterback Jake Coker, who finished his career 14-0 as a starter at Alabama and led the nation in completion percentage over the final 10 games of the season at 72.2 percent. Coker threw for 3,110 yards with 21 touchdowns, which ranks as the second-most passing yards in school history. On the ground, Kiffin fed Heisman Trophy running back Derrick Henry the ball a school-and SEC-record 395 times for a record 2,219 yards and 23 touchdowns. Henry’s 2,219 yards was also the fifth-most rushing yards in a single season in college football history.
One of Kiffin’s first responsibilities at Alabama was identifying a starting quarterback and then developing Blake Sims in 2014. With three-year starter and All-American AJ McCarron off to the NFL, Kiffin oversaw Sims’ rise to the top of the Alabama depth chart en route to a school-record 3,487 passing yards and 3,837 yards of total offense while completing 64.5 percent of his passes. He ranked tied for fourth nationally in total QBR (83.7) and seventh in passing efficiency (157.9). Sims was selected second-team All-SEC, named to the Senior Bowl, tabbed as a finalist for the Manning Award and a semifinalist for the Davey O’Brien Award.
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
