South Florida plays fast offensive football. Alabama has seen Bulls head coach Alex Golesh’s attack before, last season and in 2021, when he was the offensive coordinator at Tennessee.

Speaking during his weekly radio show appearance Thursday, Nick Saban remarked on USF’s speed as an offense.

“It’s Tennessee’s offense,” Saban said. “It’s go fast. It’s spread out, wide splits. A lot of good concepts. A lot of tricks and gimmicks and formations to try and make your players make adjustments. And they’re gonna go fast so you can’t play situational football. You almost have to play with the people on the field.”

Saban went on to explain that the pace at which USF moves makes it nearly impossible to make substitutions. He noted that even in situations where Alabama would regularly play six defensive backs or extra pass rushers, even if they were able to get the extras on the field, they wouldn’t be able to get back out.

He said that makes games tricky for the players who are on the field. In order to teach the Crimson Tide how to keep up with the pace Golesh runs, Saban and company resorted to unconventional methods during practice.

“How do you get the scout team to run their plays and do it fast?” Saban said. “Because they need to look at a card to know what the plays are. We’re fortunate to have enough players here that we have two huddles. We have one huddle on (one) hash and one huddle on (the other) hash, but only one set of defensive players. So when this team runs a play, this team’s looking at the card. As soon as that play’s over, they spot the ball over here and the other team goes up and the defensive players gotta come running over.”

Saban said the Crimson Tide would do that drill for a period in practice. He also noted the need to slow things down to have time for instruction between plays.

“When you’re going fast, I sit there on script and I circle every one we messed up,” Saban said. “Then when we slow back down we repeat the plays and make corrections. Well, that’s backwards from the way you’d like to be teaching and coaching. You’d like to make the corrections as soon as they make them.”

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

More: ‘Pissed off’ Alabama football players talk team’s mindset after Texas loss