Saraland goes back to the drawing board to find the missing ingredients

 

 

 

BIRMINGHAM — With the exception of the last three Super 7s, Saraland usually makes good teams look bad and bad teams look forward to next year.

But now it’s the Spartans who must again look ahead. Does Friday night’s 38-21 loss to Clay-Chalkville in the Class 6A state championship game make them a bad team? Of course not. But a third straight loss in the Super 7 — the only times in the last three years Saraland has gone down to defeat — will bring about a lot of self-reflection.

“Every year, you go back to the drawing board and try to find a way to be the best you can be and we’ll do the same thing next year,” said Spartans coach Jeff Kelly, who nonetheless has to be weary of being given Red Maps in the postgame ceremony and walking them back to his disappointed players. He even had to take a Red Map on a somber and rainy Uber trip back to his hotel after he was left with no ride and K.J. Lacey was left with nowhere else to go at the goal line on the last play of the classic 31-28 loss to Clay-Chalkville in the 2023 finals.

Kelly wants the Blue Map — even if it means almost fumbling it, as he did in the raucous celebration following the 38-17 win over Mountain Brook in 2022.

Kelly is now 1-5 in the Super 7 at Saraland and, of course, he takes any defeat personally. Any coach who says they don’t isn’t being truthful. But with the exception of the loss to the Cougars in 2023, the Spartans have been the underdogs every time and Kelly had them in position to win.

Friday night was different, however. Saraland fell behind 17-0 by the second quarter and Clay-Chalkville’s speed advantage across the board was unmistakable, a wound that couldn’t be sewn shut.

Sensing a possible shootout, the Spartans wanted the ball to open the game and got it when Deshawn Spencer called tails at the coin toss and it landed tails at his feet. But that was all that went Saraland’s way early, as quarterback Jamison Roberts was sacked on each of the first four possessions, a harbinger of what was to come in the face of a defense that finished with eight sacks, 13 tackles for loss and tackled with a ferocious finality.

There is a reason for that.

“These guys, you can’t let up one second of any day of practice or it just ain’t good,” Cougars coach Stuart Floyd said. “We practiced in shoulder pads every single day this year. I think it was 72 practices. We hit every day. We lift three days a week. We lift on game day. It’s just a mentality. Not everybody’s OK doing that but that’s our edge. I think it calluses your kids in a way that you’re built for this.”

Obviously, the Spartans are built to get to the Super 7 and Kelly has no peer in play calling and preparation.

“He’s played in the NFL,” said Floyd, a teammate of Kelly’s at Southern Miss. “He was our starting quarterback in college, so you know you’re not going to fool him with a lot of things, right?”

But the truth is Saraland has been beaten by better teams in the finals, except in 2023, and that one took a long time for Kelly to get out of his system. Losing by a foot will do that.

So, what’s missing?

First, the Class 6A competition in Mobile doesn’t test the Spartans or anyone else and get them ready to win a Blue Map. This season, for example, six of Saraland’s eight region opponents allowed anywhere from 21.3 to 49.5 points per game and until the playoffs, its closest game was against Class 4A state champion Jackson. It got tougher in the postseason until the Spartans ran into a defensive front they couldn’t simulate in practice or handle in the game; Roberts said it was the best he faced.

“I told our players (during the week) that we are the best team that Saraland has played this year,” Floyd said.

Lacey, who is now at Texas, was in attendance Friday night and the game had to look as familiar to him as the 2024 finals, when Saraland was overpowered up front by Parker. In both cases, great quarterbacking by Lacey and Roberts gave the Spartans a chance. In fact, it’s remarkable that Roberts did what he did after eight sacks and still finishing 28-of-37 passing for 265 yards and three touchdowns and a 162.6 quarterback rating in the loss.

Secondly, Saraland has been able to mask the lack of a reliable running game until arriving on the state’s most visible stage. Kelly used to construct run-heavy teams; consider the Spartans’ rushing yardage in their first few Super 7s — 290 yards against Clay-Chalkville in 2014; 221 against Pinson Valley in 2018; 358 against Mountain Brook to win the Blue Map in 2022.

But in the three finals since, they have 84 yards combined and averaged 1.1 yards per carry, which has exerted tremendous pressure on Saraland’s quarterbacks. Take away the eight times Roberts was sacked and they had 19 carries for 81 yards Friday night but Cougars quarterback Aaron Frye had that many on two touchdown runs of 39 and 56 yards.

Which brings up the fact that Kelly has never had a true dual-threat quarterback, as Clay-Chalkville always seems to have, although Roberts might be moving in that direction.

Floyd distilled the difference it made: “They really haven’t seen a run game with a quarterback that could run and pass. We really wanted to make them play on the perimeter and the box at the same time.”

With Lacey and Roberts at quarterback and Ryan Williams, C.D. Gill and Spencer at wideout, Kelly’s passing offenses have been second to none. But now, is there a balance to be struck? Kelly defined it not long ago: “Balance to us is not necessarily a 50-50 run/pass. It’s being able to do both when you want to.”

The offense must fit the personnel, of course, not the other way around, but the Spartans’ lone state championship was brought about with that sort of balance. With one of his better offensive line classes coming up, does Kelly incorporate more of a conventional running game into his universally respected spread passing game?

Floyd knew he could make Saraland one-dimensional, although that one dimension — Roberts to Spencer — gave him pause. Roberts has steadily become one of the South’s top quarterback prospects heading into his senior year and Spencer, who flipped from Duke to Auburn last week, may be offering glimpses of coming greatness.

“I just really felt like (Spencer) may be a little better than Duke,” Floyd said. “That’s no offense to Duke but I just felt like he was SEC-caliber. The more I watched him, I wanted to throw up.”

In the playoffs, 45 of Roberts’ 101 completions went to Spencer, who in the last three playoff games had 46 touches, with 37 going for first downs and touchdowns.

“His potential is really off the charts,” Kelly said. “I think he’s gonna go do great things because of the young man that he is.”

Roberts’ evolution has been astonishing, albeit not unexpected given who his quarterback coach is.

“He’s making plays on schedule, he’s making plays when it broke down,” Kelly said. “He played himself and worked himself into being one of the best quarterbacks anywhere. He’s got such a spirit of wanting to learn and grow and soak up every bit of information. He has a great future ahead of him.”

Does that remain true in Saraland? Over the years, it has made the doubters look foolish, although those folks had to be thrilled with Friday night’s result. But instead of wishing misfortune upon the Spartans, they should spend their time trying to emulate them. Six Super 7s are better than none.