TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Tua Tagovailoa is entering his third spring at Alabama and will be working with a third different offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach over the next 14 practices.

That’s because Steve Sarkisian has returned to the Crimson Tide football program to coordinate the offense and coach the quarterbacks after two seasons as the Atlanta Falcons’ offensive coordinator. He last served as Alabama’s offensive coordinator for the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship Game after spending the 2016 season as an offensive analyst.

Tagovailoa arrived at UA in the spring of 2017, so he hasn’t worked with Sarkisian before at the college level. But the player is excited to finally get the chance to learn from the coach this spring.

“It was really good (to see him),” Tagovailoa said. “He offered me while he was at USC, and USC was my dream school, too. I’ll be forever grateful for that. But just the person he is, he’s a good guy. He’s a relationship person in the quarterback room with not only me but everyone in there.

“It’s a real easy learning environment.”

Sarkisian was the first head coach to offer Tagovailoa when the former was at Southern Cal and the latter was a young quarterback prospect in Ewa Beach, Hawaii. As everyone knows, the former 5-star recruit chose Alabama over other programs like LSU, Oregon, UCLA and USC.

But now they have reunited in Tuscaloosa and look to keep the Tide’s offense rolling.

Unlike last season with Mike Locksley calling plays and Dan Enos being hands-on with the signal callers, Sarkisian will serve as both the offensive coordinator and quarterback coach for Alabama. During interviews Monday, Tagovailoa said that change excites him for 2019.

“The relationship between your quarterback and your OC is definitely something big,” he said.

Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian

In Atlanta a season ago, Sarkisian’s offense finished in the top 10 in the NFL in passing yards (fourth, 4,653 yards), total yards (sixth, 6,226 yards) and scoring (10th, 25.9 ppg). Quarterback Matt Ryan threw for 4,924 yards with 35 touchdowns while former Alabama receivers Julio Jones and Calvin Ridley caught a combined 177 passes for 2,498 yards and 18 touchdowns.

But as Nick Saban said to open spring, the Tide is still going to run its offense. It will simply have some Sarkisian wrinkles thrown in here and there just as past coordinators have done. This spring, It’s about getting comfortable with new terminology and how Sarkisian likes to do things.

“We’ve implemented a good amount of things that Sark likes to run and that he’s run in past, but we still have a good amount of the things that we had last year,” Tagovailoa said, “so it’s not too much of a big learning curve.”

After the first of 15 spring practices and ahead of the second, which will take place later today at 3:30 p.m. CT, Tagovailoa and company are clearly happy to have Sarkisian back in the building.

“My experience is the guy did a really good job when he was here,” Saban said on Day 1 of spring practice. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for him for what he did before he came here as an offensive coach. I don’t think it’s fair to criticize when a guy takes over a job one week before a game and has to go try to implement something because the circumstance we were in. I think if you look at the body of work with the Falcons, they were like sixth in the NFL in offense or whatever so there’s got to be some level of expertise to allow them to do that. The players that I talked to there thought he did a really good job and was a good coach.

“He’s, I think, a tremendous asset on our staff, and we’re very pleased and happy to have him.”

Contact Charlie Potter by 247Sports' personal messaging or on Twitter (@Charlie_Potter).

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