Nick Saban reveals why he 'always hated' playing Texas, Steve Sarkisian

Nick Saban was not a fan of playing and coaching against Steve Sarkisian and Texas. Sark was Saban’s former offensive coordinator at Alabama before taking over the Longhorns.

Now retired, Saban doesn’t have to worry about Sarkisian on the field anymore. But other teams in the SEC have to deal with those issues.

Saban explained Tuesday on SEC Network.

“I kind of always hated playing against Sark,” Saban said. “In practice for several years, as well as when we played them the past couple years. Because they do such a good job with what I call squeeze-splits. We play in this day and age where people take this huge splits like Tennessee — which, that’s a problem, too — but players are not used to — especially DBs — are not used to playing when you have squeeze splits. Because you put them in unfamiliar positions, whether it’s run support or how they cover.

“When you’re in squeeze splits, how can this guy get to that side of the field quickly, which messes up your pattern matches So, I always hated playing against Texas and Kirby (Smart’s) got some of the same issues that we had.”

Nick Saban says Steve Sarkisian is a pain to coach against

Saban might’ve said Sarkisian is a pain and hated going against him, but the latter coach revealed what Texas needed to compete in the SEC for the first time.

“When we first got here it was about ‘What type of team do we wanna build? What type of roster do we wanna build?’” Sarkisian said. “Naturally, when you just look at the history of the College Football Playoff over the last decade or so, you have to think you gotta beat the best team in the SEC, probably the two best teams in the SEC, because they’re more than likely gonna be in the playoff, so what does that look like?

“We needed to get bigger and more physical upfront on line of scrimmage, offensively and defensively. We had to make sure that we had enough speed on the perimeter and playmaking ability on the perimeter on both sides of the ball. And then, we had to make sure that we were athletic enough down the middle of our defense.”

Sarkisian’s plan came to fruition last season when Texas defeated No. 3 Alabama 34-24 in Week 2, proving the Longhorns could hang with the SEC’s cream of the crop. Texas didn’t stop there, posting a 12-2 record and making its first appearance in the College Football Playoff.