New year. New offensive coordinator.

New offense?

For the third straight year, a new coach is in the headset of the Alabama OC job and the questions are obvious. What’s different with the 2019 Crimson Tide offense with so much 2018 firepower back.

The season-opening win over Duke gave some hints to the flavor Steve Sarkisian will add to the recipe leftover from Mike Locksley. The sample size is too small to make grand statements but there were themes of note.

A few Alabama offensive players added perspective to what they felt on the field during Alabama’s 42-3 win over Duke.

"I feel like we was more play-by-play,” receiver Jerry Jeudy said after a 10-catch, 137-yard afternoon. “You know, last year we were more like score fast, score fast, big play, score fast. This year, we’re like taking it slow play-by-play.”

Alabama had three possessions of 12 or more snaps with two more nine-play touchdown drives against Duke. For reference, the Tide had just one possession with more than eight plays in last year’s opener against Louisville. That happened just 13 times in the 2018 regular season when 36 touchdown drives required five or fewer plays.

It was more of a grind against Duke.

“It’s definitely harder as an offensive line,” right tackle Jedrick Wills said, “but I feel like it’s kind of a come-to-heart moment, to see who’s a true man at that point.”

It’s worth noting that after the Duke game, Tua Tagovailoa said the down-field passing game was limited by Duke’s defensive scheme. They took two shots downfield in the first quarter that were well-defended and fell incomplete.

And for the game, no passing play was longer than an intermediate route thrown to Jaylen Waddle for 39 yards mostly after the catch.

“It kind of just changes our mindset,” Jeudy said. “Just help us really focus on, ‘Ok we don’t got to have a big play every single time,” so we got to take things slow play play-by-play."

Receiver DeVonta Smith had some time to process the plan from the sideline while serving a first-quarter suspension. Seeing a few concepts in reality helped.

“It’s hard to go into detail of it,” Smith said, “but just the schemes (Sarkisian is) trying to do, the meaning of everything from the run plays to the pass plays to the RPOs, the way that you read it. Once you see it from the sidelines, you’re like, ‘Oh ok, that’s why he’s doing this.’

Before the opener, Nick Saban on his radio show said Alabama added a few things “that will help our offense but I also think there is a lot of continuity.”

The ABC-TV broadcast booth noted some of the West Coast offensive principles characteristic of a Sarkisian offense. They also said it looked like there were fewer run-pass option plays that were so heavily used a year ago.

Smith, however, said that concept was still in the plan.

“It was about the same thing,” he said. “It was just the pressure that was coming in that stopped some of it.”

Overall, the offense didn’t feel that different, Smith said. It was more about how Sarkisian calls things and the way he does it that differs from last year.

There were a few tweaks in the roles of the receivers, Smith said. It sounds like there’s more fluidity between the X, Y and Z receiver positions.

“The offense stayed the same but it’s not necessarily you’re this receiver, that receiver,” Smith said. “Whatever the formation, where you at, that’s where you at. You can be anywhere: one play you can be outside, next you can be in the slot. I think that kind of helps us all out a lot because now we can all get a feel for the inside and the outside.”

With that, there was a tease Saturday of the four-receiver look that Alabama terms “red personnel.”

Smith smiled at the mention of that sprinkling into a few more game plans.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “I just really want to see how, with us being out there how things are going to be called. You game plan for different teams and you have different things certain ways. You can’t just go out there every game and go Red. Depending on who the opponent is, you’re going to game plan and go with whatever personnel you want to.”

Michael Casagrande is an Alabama beat writer for the Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @ByCasagrande or on Facebook.