Lane Kiffin’s offense and a furious defense could make Alabama even better than last season

Alabama knew it had broken Michigan State by the third quarter of January’s College Football Playoff semifinal.

Michigan State hadn’t scored yet — and wouldn’t at all in a 38-0 drubbing. After Alabama swarmed another screen pass, Spartans quarterback Connor Cook stomped to the sideline and vented.

“They’re everywhere!” Cook said, injecting an unprintable adjective in between.

This is what it’s like to be steamrollered by the Alabama football machine. USC, which opens its season on Saturday against the Crimson Tide, is the latest team in its path.

Several big names have decamped to the NFL from Alabama’s latest national championship team. But 14 starters remain, Alabama has a roster that reloads yearly and it is still led by Nick Saban, the most successful coach of this era. Plus, they have Lane Kiffin, the former USC coach who is considered one of the best offensive coordinators in the nation.

Taken together, Alabama might be even better than last season.

Saban has won three other national titles at Alabama, plus one at Louisiana State. But, arguably, he has never had a defense like this team’s. Pro Football Focus graded six Alabama defensive players among the top 64 players in the nation. For comparison, USC, a team not wanting for talent, boasted three players on the list — on offense and defense combined.

Phil Savage, an Alabama radio analyst and the former general manager of the Cleveland Browns, visited Alabama practice last week and was awed.

“This defense will be the fastest and most athletic Nick Saban has had in his 10 seasons,” Savage tweeted afterward.

USC Coach Clay Helton said he was “so impressed by their speed on tape.”

“This is a faster unit, in my opinion, than they had last year on defense,” he said.

Saban has prioritized swiftness over brawn to adapt to the proliferation of up-tempo offenses. USC could try to attack Alabama with power, but that, too, could encounter resistance. Three Crimson Tide linebackers are expected to receive All-America consideration: Tim Williams, Reuben Foster and Ryan Anderson.

On the line, Jonathan Allen, a first-team All-Southeastern Conference selection last season, recorded 14.5 tackles for loss in 2015, including 12 sacks — all 12 against power-five conference teams.

And the secondary includes two more All-America candidates, cornerback Marlon Humphrey and safety Eddie Jackson.

The question, then, will be how Kiffin assembles an offense that lost its Heisman Trophy-winning running back, Derrick Henry, a quarterback who didn’t lose a game as a starter, Jake Coker, and its Rimington Trophy-winning center, Ryan Kelly.

USC expects Kiffin to pound the ball inside against the Trojans’ thin defensive line. The Crimson Tide return three starters on the line, including first-team All-SEC left tackle Cam Robinson, who was arrested in May but had charges dropped in June.

Helton has indicated he’ll stack the box often, but that just shifts the burden onto USC’s secondary to stop one of the best tight ends in the nation, O.J. Howard, and one of the best receivers, Calvin Ridley.

Helton compared Ridley to former USC receiver Marqise Lee.

“You hold your breath every time he touches it,” Helton said.

Cornerback Adoree’ Jackson has lobbied the coaching staff to allow him to shadow Ridley wherever he lines up.

“I’m not scared,” Jackson said. “I’m not backing down from anybody.”

The quarterback position remains a two-way race between Cooper Bateman and Blake Barnett. Both lack experience, but Saban usually navigates that well — three of his four championship teams had to break in an inexperienced quarterback.

USC expects Alabama to run a familiar offense. Trojans offensive coordinator Tee Martin, in an interview with a radio station in Mobile, Ala., last week, said Kiffin took USC’s offense and installed it at Alabama. The appeal is clear. Hampered by sanctions and prone to unflattering utterances, Kiffin’s tenure at USC was rocky. But his offensive mind was never in question.

“It’s like a gift,” USC running back Justin Davis said. “He sees so much stuff that the average eye doesn’t see.”

Special teams coach John Baxter said Kiffin “sees the game in slow motion.”

Baxter is one of five USC coaches to serve on Kiffin’s staff. None expressed any animosity. Kiffin, most said, treated them well.

“I don’t know how he’s become the villain of all of college football,” Baxter said.

Alabama tightly restricts its assistant coaches’ media availability, but before the playoff last season, Kiffin explained why his first three head coaching stints fizzled, despite his aptitude for the game.

“When you become a head coach so early, so young and so fast, you don’t really know why you’re doing things,” he said.

For the 19 current Trojans who played for Kiffin, the relationship is more complicated. His tenure marked the beginning of a volatile stretch that spanned most of their time at USC.

Offensive lineman Zach Banner said he hadn’t thought much about Kiffin coaching at Alabama. He said he wished Kiffin well.

But, when asked if he took anything positive from Kiffin’s time at USC, his reply was curt.

“He had good visors,” Banner said, then walked away, ending the interview.

Times staff writer Jesse Dougherty contributed to this report.

zach.helfand@latimes.com

Twitter: @zhelfand