Nick Saban Explains What Makes a Mike Leach Offense So Effective

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — This Saturday, Alabama football will take on a highly-touted passing offense in Mississippi State under head coach Mike Leach.

Leach has grown quite notorious over the years for his "air-raid" style of offensive coaching, with more than a fair share of quarterbacks during his time raking in vast amounts of passing yards and receivers wrangling in receiving touchdown after receiving touchdown.

This season is no different. With junior quarterback Will Rogers under center, the Bulldogs have passed for an SEC-leading 2,324 passing yards alongside the most passing touchdowns in the conference with 23.

Speaking on his weekly appearance on Hey Coach! on Thursday evening, Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban explained what he believes makes Leach's air-raid offense to potent.

"They have some really good concepts in the passing game, but they really kind of change the formations but the passing concepts are relatively the same," Saban said. "I mean, there’s quite a few of them but if you’re really, really — I think this is one of the most important things when you play a team like this — you have to understand their offense like they understand it because you’re going to get certain routes and certain formations, you’re going to get certain routes and receiver locations and anticipating what’s going to happen in those situations is going to help you cover what they do.

“But the concept of it is they spread you out, they look at what kind of leverage that you’re playing in the secondary with your outside technique, inside technique, playing split safeties, got a middle-of-the-field coverage — whatever it is — and they have so much experience in this offensive system, they know exactly how to take advantage of whatever you’re playing. And I think that’s what makes it difficult to defend."

Since Leach arrived in Starkville, Miss. to coach the Bulldogs, Mississippi State has failed to score a single touchdown against Saban and the Crimson Tide. In 2020, Alabama won by a final score of 41-0 inside Bryant-Denny Stadium. In 2021 at Starkville, the Crimson Tide won 49-9 with all nine points coming from three Bulldogs field goals.

While covering Mississippi State's receivers and pressuring their quarterback might be something that many teams struggle with, it hasn't been a problem yet for Alabama. That being said, Saban admits that prior victories have no impact on this year's game.

“You gotta mix it up, you gotta do a lot of things on defense and our players are going to have to do a really good job of executing together as a team because you’ve gotta affect the quarterback with the pass rush, make him get the ball out of his hands quickly as well as being able to cover people down the field. So this is a challenge," Saban said. "It really is.

“The last couple of years we’ve done a decent job against them, but that won’t have any impact of how we do against this team this year. They’ve got really good players, the quarterback’s got more experience and he’s playing extremely well.”

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