Hurricanes aim to stem Tide
Will lean on Lashlee’s past successes vs. ’Bama, utilize King’s versatility
There may not be a person on the Miami Hurricanes football coaching staff who better understands what’ll take for UM to take down Alabama in its season opener on Saturday than offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee.
And there are very few coaches who’ve led an offense that has had multiple successful outings against the Crimson Tide since Nick Saban took over the program in 2007 like Lashlee has.
Since winning their first national championship under Saban in 2009, the Crimson Tide have gone 137-15 (90.1 winning percentage) in the following 11 seasons leading into this one.
Among those 15 losses includes a 2013 “Iron Bowl” defeat to Auburn, where Lashlee was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach from 2013-16.
In that 34-28 Tigers win over Alabama that ended with the infamous “Kick Six” — when Auburn’s Chris Davis returned a missed field goal attempt 100 yards to seal the victory — Tigers quarterback Nick Marshall went 11 of 16 for 97 passing yards and two touchdowns while rushing for 99 yards and one touchdown on 17 attempts.
Marshall went 27 of 43 for 456 passing yards and three touchdowns while adding 49 rushing yards in Auburn’s matchup against Alabama the following year. The Tigers lost the 2014 game, 55-44, but their scoring total was the most points the Crimson Tide allowed that season and until the 2019 season remained tied for the most points a team has scored against Alabama with Saban at the helm.
So as he prepares another showdown against an Alabama team that’s expected to have one of the best — if not the best — defenses in the nation, Lashlee mentioned how critical it is for quarterbacks who face the Crimson Tide to be able to make plays in the air and on the ground.
“If you look at the history, not many people give them trouble, but the people who have — with the exception of probably LSU and Joe Burrow a few years ago — typically they have a quarterback that can also hurt you with his feet,” Lashlee said. “We had that with Nick Marshall when we beat them in 2013. We lost to them in ‘14, but had a good offensive night. Nick was a big part of that. That was the difference
between ’13 and ’14 and probably the ’15 and ’16 seasons when we played them.”
The quarterback the Hurricanes are hoping will give Alabama trouble? D’Eriq King, who’s coming off an 11-game season where he threw for 2,686 yards and 23 touchdowns while setting Miami’s single-season record for rushing yards by a quarterback with 538 before tearing his ACL and meniscus at the end of last season.
King has been one of the better dual-threat quarterbacks in the nation since he joined Houston in 2016, passing for 7,611 yards and 73 touchdowns on a 62.6 completion percentage while rushing for 1,959 yards and 32 touchdowns on 5.1 yards per carry in the last five years.
Similar to Lashlee, King sees his skill set as a quarterback as almost a necessary one to beat Alabama.
“The team’s that beat those guys, they usually have dual-threat quarterbacks,” he said. “They usually make plays down the field and get extra yards with their legs. They have a really good defense. We just got to take our chances and take our shots. I just got to do me.”
Saturday’s matchup will mark the fifth time since 2013 that Lashlee has had to prepare an offensive game plan for Alabama’s defense, which he believes is as good as any defensive unit the Crimson Tide have had in recent years.
“They were a lot of young guys playing a year ago that are all back now,” he said. “Now they’ve gone from an inexperienced group a year ago to now they’re a veteran bunch with a lot of stars.”
Among those stars are second-year linebacker Will Anderson Jr., a former four-star prospect who recorded seven sacks last year, and redshirt senior linebacker Christopher Allen, who had six sacks in 2020.
“Will Anderson — he’s as good as they come,” Lashlee said. “They still have the run-stopping [defensive] linemen, but they don’t have to because those two guys can really drastically affect the game. I don’t know if there’s a better pass rusher one-on-one than [Anderson] in the entire country.”
While he feels more confident about the Hurricanes chances of upsetting the Crimson Tide with King as the signal-caller, Lashlee knows UM will still have its hands full against a defense he doesn’t see many weaknesses.
“It’s going to be his first game back since his injury, so all signs point to he’s in great shape,” he said. “I’m really excited we got D’Eriq King going into this game, but the challenge is still pretty great.”