After testing positive for COVID-19 earlier this morning, Alabama head coach Nick Saban shared that with him not being available to coach during the Iron Bowl, offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian would once again oversee game-day decisions.
Sarkisian had been tapped to take over for Saban earlier in the year when the head coach had been diagnosed with a false positive PCR test. Saban would later coach that Saturday against Georgia but now that he has mild symptoms he will be staying home.
“He’s been a head coach for many years,” Saban said during his teleconference on Wednesday. “He’ll continue to call plays. We won’t change anything other than he’ll have some of the administrative game-day decisions, he’ll have to be involved in. So we really will discuss that more. We discussed that when I went through this three-day hiatus before the Georgia game, we discussed exactly how we’d do that. But we’ll be a little more specific about that later in the week.”
As expected Sarkisian will also be in charge of “overseeing things in the building” in terms of in-person preparation. Sarkisian has prior head coaching experience with USC as well as Washington.
Despite showing symptoms this time around the original release of Saban’s positive test described his as “mild” and the head coach shared how he was feeling during the call.
“Just a little bit of a runny nose. But nothing really. I feel fine,” Saban said. “I don’t really have anything significant. I don’t have a fever or any of the tests they’ve attempted to do. I don’t really have anything of significance.”
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
