Highlights from Steve Sarkisian and Nick Saban on the Pat McAfee Show

The Pat McAfee Show was live inside Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Friday and former Alabama head coach Nick Saban plus Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian previewed a massive top-five matchup between the No. 1 Texas Longhorns and the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs.

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The full video is below, with Saban joining at the 1:14:30 mark and Sarkisian jumping on at 1:47:30.

Pat McAfee: “Sark, obviously you and he have a great relationship, a great connection, have had a lot of success together. Kirby Smart and you, obviously great connection, great relationship, a lot going on. How do you think both of them are viewing tomorrow, and have you got a chance to catch up with them this week?”

Nick Saban: “Well I talked to Sark this week, and you know I think Sark stays pretty even keeled. He sort of analyzes the game a little differently in terms of how he’s going to approach it, what he’s going to do. He’s had his offensive staff together for a long time, so they know they’re going to have to make adjustments in the game because of his respect for Kirby and the way Kirby will play defense, and what he will try to do on defense. There’s going to be something a little different that they will have to adjust to, but having a staff on offense that has been together for a long time I think allows them to do that. You know they started a little slow the last week against Oklahoma, then all of a sudden you see them getting going, so that wouldn’t surprise me if that happens.

“I did not talk to Kirby, I’m going to talk to him a little later today but I know Kirby has been a little concerned about you know how they play defense, not quite as good of a tackling team they have been in the past. They’ve given up a few more explosive plays, but he’s got a really good coaching staff, he’s got good players and I’m sure they’ll get them on track.”

Nick Saban on the environment at Texas: “You know the atmosphere here, I think you’re going to see it really grow into more and more of a SEC atmosphere, because they’re gonna have more games like this that are going to have huge national and playoff implications”

Saban on if he thinks having adversity early on in the season helps and if he likes it: “Yeah I do, I like early on for us to sort of find our who we are. Georgia is the team that has the heart of a champion, which they showed in the Alabama game when they got (down big), and they came back in the game and actually went ahead in the game… So when you’re playing a team like that you’ve got to play for 60 minutes obviously, but I do think that the Texas defense is “very good”, I’m not criticizing (the defense) at all but I also don’t think they have been tested like they’re going to be tested in this game… Georgia has a really good quarterback, they’ve been a very effective passing team, they’ve had some balance on offense… so (Texas) is going to get tested tomorrow more than they have all year long.”

Pat McAfee on Steve Sarkisian joining the day before the game: “I think all of us and the boys back in Indianapolis are very thankful that you joined us Sark. We did not expect this, obviously day before this big of a game. I guess you’re just used to this though? This is what Texas has become, you were obviously hired to do this. There was a lot of hype, a lot of “Can anybody win at Texas?”, so much money, so many people talkin’, “Is Texas going to be able to win in this modern day?”, you have come in and done that. How has it been here at Texas and how excited are you that the program is where it is right now?”

"You can interpret this however you want but this is our mantra around here" ~ @CoachSark

HEY @OfficialAJHawk..

WHY DON'T YOU FAFO ONE TIME 😂😂 #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/8O41nQPOaM

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) October 18, 2024

Sark: “It’s been amazing, you know it’s definitely been a journey. You know people forget we were 5-7 in year one and we were losing. Like we had the lead, we lost six straight games and we had the lead in the second half of everyone of those six games. So we had to learn how to win, then we get 8-5. After year one we had zero players drafted in the NFL draft, we go 8-5 in year two, we have five guys go, Bijan goes in the first round. In year three we go 12-2, we’re conference champs, we make the College Football Playoff, we break the school record where we have 11 guys drafted. And now we’re in year four, we’re playing pretty good football, we’re in the SEC, it’s been a blast man.”

Pat McAfee asked Sark what he learned from Saban, and what he knows about Kirby from the time he was at Alabama: “So a couple things, one I had been kind of raised by Pete Carroll and so there was this whole coaching style of the Pete Carroll, the loose, the fun but yet driven and focused… and then I get with Nick Saban, and it’s like boom we’re gonna operate in this box that’s not very big. But what I learned is these guys coach to their personality, and who they were was naturally how they coached, and teams took on their personality. So what I took out of it was, when I got this job here was okay “Who am I?” and how do I want our team to be? So I think I’ve got a lot of Nick Saban in me, I think I’ve got a lot of Pete Carroll in me.

“So morphing those two together for our team has been big. Kirby the one thing I know is they’re gonna play great defense and they’re gonna be intense. They’re gonna play hard, they’re gonna play physical. They’ve recruited great, you know Georgia has really been the standard now for college football for about the last 6 or 7 years. I think they’ve been to six SEC championship games, three national championship games, so you know it is what it is. They’re gonna come in here, they’re not gonna be afraid of 105,000, they’re gonna come ready to play.”

Sark on Texas in the SEC: “To me that is the SEC (Texas and SEC being together), it’s like people want to get up for one game. In this conference it’s not about one game, it’s surviving all eight (conference games) and what that looks like. It’s week in and week out. The mental intensity that you have to have every week, but yet the physicality and the depth that you have to have on your roster to endure what an SEC (season looks like).”

Sark on teams in the SEC getting exposed: “Oh my gosh, quickly, quickly, quickly. And we’ve seen it already in this conference, I mean some really good teams have gone down that people are probably surprised by.”

How does Sark feel about the modern era of college football and how it applies to his team: “I think this new playoff is gonna be incredible for college football, but I also think we have to continually adapt as programs right? Times are changing, right? NIL has changed, you know revenue sharing, and what that’s going to look like, conference realignment, and we’ve been preaching that a lot. It’s something I got from Saban, adapt or die. There’s a reason dinosaurs aren’t on the Earth anymore, they didn’t adapt. So we’ve tried to adapt with the times and use some of the new things to our advantage, but yet not lose sight of who we truly are and what we’re about.”

Sark on he how Quinn Ewers handled the media hype around Arch Manning and what does he expect of of Quinn versus Georgia: “I give both those guys a lot of credit on how they handled this, I think Arch is Quinn’s biggest supporter and when Arch was playing, Quinn was his biggest supporter. That’s a really cool sign of a great team, and the teammates that they are, the way they support one another. It’s not easy when the backup goes in and he gets a louder ovation than the starter. It just is what it is but I think the acknowledgement of that, understanding the situation, those guys like I said supporting one another has been huge. One thing I know about Quinn, big games come and that guy shows up. He’s played really good football for us in all the big games we’ve been in, and obviously we got a big one here tomorrow. We expect that guy to show up.”

AJ Hawk asked Sark what the last thing he says to the team and if it’s planned or organic: “I think it’s probably a combination of both you know, we have some themes we have through the week that we try to get to, but ultimately the one thing I always try to remind our team of when we take the field is, go be us. We don’t have to try to be something that we’re not, we’ve got a certain style in which we like to play the game, we’ve got a certain swagger in which we try to take the field with, and go attack the game that way. When we’re loose and were confident, and we’re believing in what were doing, we are at our best. So that’s what we try to go do.”

Sark on his OL potentially winning the Joe Moore Award: “We’ve got two elite tackles in my opinion, I think both of those guys are first-round picks. But the thing that we have, we got a four year starter at center, and how valuable is a center not only on your offense but on your team, because those guys… the offensive line is always the personality. It always starts to kind of shape your locker room. Everybody wants to talks about the DBs and receivers, but when the O Line has got that comradery, when they’ve got that personality and confidence, I think that permeates throughout the team.”

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