Has USFâs Alex Golesh found the key to beating Nick Saban and Alabama?

Former Tennessee offensive coordinator Alex Golesh figured he had the correct scheme against Alabama football in 2021.

“I thought we were on the right stuff,” Golesh said Tuesday. “Just didn’t have the bullets to go finish it in the fourth quarter.”

Golesh, along with head coach Josh Heupel and the rest of the Volunteers, dropped that game 52-24, with the Tide outsourcing UT 28-7 in the fourth. The next year, Golesh, now the head coach at South Florida, and Tennessee figured it out.

The Volunteers won 52-49 in 2022.

“We found an answer,” Golesh said. “Found a way to create some explosives and then kept exploiting that, which was cool from a schematic standpoint.”

After last year’s Tennessee team rode Golesh and Heupel’s offense confounded the Crimson Tide. The Volunteer aired it out, with quarterback Hendon Hooker throwing for 385 yards and five touchdowns.

UT was able to go over the top of the Alabama defense, with three of the touchdown passes going over 35 yards and two of them going 60 or more. Nick Saban said he was expecting a similar look for USF on Saturday.

“They spread you out,” Saban said of USF Wednesday on the SEC’s weekly media teleconference. “The quarterback has done a really good job. They’ve been able to make plays and have balanced run and pass. I think they’ve been really, really effective.”

The issue for the Bulls is talent. Tennessee wasn’t anywhere close to leading the SEC in recruiting in the four years before the 2022 game, but it was at least SEC caliber.

Heupel and Golesh’s scheme and execution was able to close that gap. That will be far more difficult for Golesh this season, with a USF team ranked No. 65 nationally on the 247Sports talent composite, a metric where Alabama ranks first.

Still, what Golesh and company did last season hasn’t gone unnoticed. Texas used the deep pass to great success on Saturday, with Quinn Ewers connecting on 44 and 39-yard touchdown passes.

“We obviously didn’t play very well in the last game,” Saban said of his secondary on Wednesday. “We gave up a lot of explosive plays. We take responsibility for that as coaches. We gotta try and get our players better prepared for what they’re going to see.”

Part of how Golesh and the Volunteers were able to figure out Alabama came as a direct by-product of the Crimson Tide’s success over Saban’s tenure. His former assistants are everywhere.

Between losing to UA in 2021 and winning the game in 2022, Tennessee faced three teams with a former Saban assistant as a head coach or coordinator. Golesh and Heupel had chances to see similar concepts to what Alabama has run.

“You go in year one and you see a system,” Golesh said. “And obviously I was on one side of the ball, but you see a system that’s consistent in that conference, like there’s a lot of people that have gone out of that tree and have played that are coaching in that league now. So, felt like you see that scheme over and over again and you’re navigating it, trying to find the right ways to attack it.”

Alabama has been criticized throughout the week after the Texas loss had many wondering if the Saban dynasty is over. Saban himself said Wednesday that he thought the criticism was valid given how the Crimson Tide played.

Unfortunately for Golesh, his USF team looks wildly overmatched this year, at least on paper. Tennessee didn’t have as many blue-chip recruits as last year’s Alabama squad, but this is another level of challenge entirely, after the coach took over a team that went 1-11 in 2022 and has so far lost to Western Kentucky and won an ugly game against Florida A&M this season.

Whether or not Golesh helped unlock the secret to beating Alabama for everyone else, he was under no delusions about how difficult Saturday’s game will be for the Bulls.

“Alabama is Alabama, right?,” Golesh said. “They’ve won six national titles in 16 years. Those guys know how to win, they know how to work, they’ve got good football coaches. They’ve got really good players.”

Alabama and South Florida are scheduled to kick off at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in Tampa. The game will be aired on ABC.