Steve Sarkisian has joined the growing list of coaches who have worked for Nick Saban a second time.

The Alabama head coach has the reputation of being hard on his assistants, in terms of how much he demands from them both on the field and off. But that didn’t stop Sarkisian from joining Saban’s staff for another stint as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach earlier this year.

Sarkisian spoke to the media for the first time since his re-hiring at Alabama Thursday in Mobile, prior to his appearance at the 25th annual L’Arche Football Preview Dinner. The 45-year-old Sarkisian — a former head coach at both USC and Washington — spent the previous two years as offensive coordinator of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons.

“I think coach Saban is a tremendous football coach, obviously that goes without saying. He doesn’t need my endorsement for that,” Sarkisian said. “He’s very detail-oriented, he’s very organized. There’s a reason behind everything that we do. I appreciate that. I operate that way. I like having structure, I like knowing what the plan is for the day. We’re extremely efficient when we work. But more importantly, he’s a really good man. I think sometimes that gets missed in this — the compassion that he has for his players and his coaches, the desire he has for all of them have success. I appreciated the year I was with him in 2016, and it was a pretty easy decision to come back and work for him again. I feel like I grew a lot in that season of being with him. I still have a lot of room to grow as a coach, and when you can get around somebody like coach Saban to work under, to learn from, it’s a hard opportunity to pass up.”

Sarkisian’s previous tenure as Alabama’s offensive coordinator lasted just one game, a 35-31 loss to Clemson in the 2016-17 College Football Playoff National Championship Game. He had begun that season as an offensive analyst, getting elevated to OC upon Lane Kiffin’s sudden departure following the Crimson Tide’s playoff semifinal victory over Washington.

Sarkisian left soon after the Clemson game for the Falcons, with whom he had an up-and-down two-year tenure before being cut loose at the end of the 2018 season. When Alabama offensive coordinator Mike Locksley left to take the head-coaching job at Maryland, Sarkisian was quick to agree to return to Tuscaloosa.

“I loved my time here, the first year with coach Saban in 2016,” Sarkisian said. “It actually was a very tough decision to go to the Falcons at the end of that season. When this opportunity came back around, I really felt like it was too good to be true. Here’s another opportunity to get back to Alabama and work with coach Saban, the history, the tradition, the excellence that they’ve had in the program. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

Sarkisian has been reunited at Alabama not only with Saban, but quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, with whom he has enjoyed a long-standing relationship. Sarkisian first met the 2018 Heisman Trophy runner-up in 2015 when he was head coach at USC and Tagovailoa was a budding high school star in Hawaii.

Tagovailoa has been vocal about his affinity for Sarkisian, both as a person and as a quarterbacks coach. Sarkisian said he’s watched Tagovailoa’s development from afar, and is thrilled to finally have the opportunity work with him directly.

“I offered Tua a scholarship after I went and watched him work out over at St. Louis High School in Honolulu,” Sarkisian said. “From then on, we re-connected through recruiting. I was there at Alabama right when he first showed up (as a true freshman early enrollee), but then obviously moved on to the Falcons and now back. Tua’s a very instinctual player. He’s got great instincts for the game, he’s got a very quick release. But I think the biggest thing about him is he’s had to deal with a lot of success and then the hardship at the end of last year. To see him put in the work this offseason — I know coach Saban been pushing him to do a lot of the little things to become the best player he can be. He’s done that. Today was our first day back for the summer, and he looked in great shape. I know he’s chomping at the bit to have another great season this fall.”

Sarkisian’s Falcons offenses were a mixed bag, despite the presence of Pro Bowl quarterback Matt Ryan and All-Pro receiver Julio Jones. Atlanta finished sixth in the NFL in total offense and fourth in passing yards last year, but 27th in rushing yards and 10th in scoring.

The Falcons finished 7-9 and out of the playoffs in 2018, just two years after playing in the Super Bowl. And though it ended in his firing, Sarkisian called his tenure in the NFL “a great experience,” if for no other reason than that he got to work with the likes of Ryan, Jones and Calvin Ridley, like Jones a former Alabama star.

“I loved my time in Atlanta,” Sarkisian said. “Matt Ryan was a lot of fun to be around. Last season was a unique opportunity to coach two former Bama players in Julio Jones and Calvin Ridley at wide receiver. I think the thing you saw was the work ethic those two guys have, and that really gets instilled in you at Alabama. To see how hard Julio prepared and practiced and how hard Calvin prepared and practiced, and then you come back to Alabama, you just see it across the board on our entire roster.

“For me, outside of Xs and Os, and working with an All-Pro quarterback in Matt Ryan, it put things into perspective the type of individuals that (A) coach Saban recruits at Alabama, but (B) what he instills in them while they are here, as they grow from freshmen to juniors and seniors, that presence that they have, that work ethic that they have, that discipline that they have to be great. Those two guys are prime examples in the National Football League of continuing to prepare and play that way, of what they were taught here at Alabama.”

Sarkisian addressed a number of other topics, including:

How things might be different in his second go-round at Alabama: “In 2016, I was an analyst. I really wasn’t the offensive coordinator until that last game, the national championship game. Obviously now, having been through an offseason with him as (Saban’s) offensive coordinator, we definitely work hand-in-hand. There are definitely a lot of organizational things we have to work through to make sure things are running the way he wants them ran. We’ve got a very good relationship, I appreciate his approach and I’m enjoying working with him again.”

Alabama’s talented receivers — Jerry Jeudy, Devonta Smith, Henry Ruggs and Jaylen Waddle: “I think the beauty of all those guys is, they really understand football very well. Their football IQ is really high. They recognize we’ve got a very good quarterback who is going to distribute the ball where it’s supposed to go. They play hard, they play for one another, and then they maximize their opportunities when they come. Rarely do you feel like guys are saying ‘I want the ball’ or ‘why am I not getting the ball?’ They understand coverages and schemes and how they mesh. I give those a lot of credit — they come to work every day, they strive to get better, they push one another. It’s not only on the field, it’s off the field. They’re a great group to work with and it’s a lot of fun for me. They’re genuinely excited for each other when they make a play. I think you saw it last year when you look at their numbers — all four of those guys had really good years. In certain games, one or two guys might have had the bigger games. Then the next week it might have been the other two.”

How the NFL and college football are becoming more similar: “I think it’s a two-way street. Having spent the last two years in the NFL, having spent the majority of my career in college, I do think it’s a two-way street. I think a lot of the schemes, the style of play that is starting to get implemented into the NFL now is a direct correlation with college football. I believe it’s a direct correlation — the style of quarterbacks, the shotgun, the spread offenses, the throwing of the football, it’s trickled its way up to the National Football League. But the NFL also has a lot of resources at its disposal. When you start talking about player safety and things of that nature that the NFL has implemented the last few years, you’re seeing that start to trickle its way into college football. We’ve got a great game. We’ve got a lot of great coaches, and not all of the great coaches are in the NFL. There’s a ton of them in college, a ton of them in high school and even some in youth leagues. We’re fortunate that we communicate really well at different levels, because I think there’s plenty that we can learn from each other to make our sport as great as it could be.”

If Kyler Murray will be a successful NFL quarterback: “It will be interesting. I’ve got a lot of respect for (Arizona Cardinals coach) Kliff Kingsbury, and I think Kyler is a tremendous player. We saw a couple of rookies last year in Pat Mahomes and Baker Mayfield, a little bit different style than the traditional quarterbacks, the Tom Bradys, the Peyton Mannings or the Matt Ryans. NFL coaches are really showing a flexibility and an ability to coach and scheme and draft players, and then adapt their schemes to those players. I don’t know if 10-15 years ago, that was the case. It’s definitely happening now.”

L’Arche is an international federation of communities in which people with an intellectual disability and those who help them can live, work, and share their lives together. For more information, visit http://www.larchemobile.org or http://www.larche.org.