Why Nick Saban and Alabama bottomed out at quarterback
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Alex Scarborough, ESPN Staff Writer
Alabama receivers aren’t creating enough separation, the offensive line is allowing too much pressure in the backfield, getting a snap from center has turned into an adventure rather than a formality, the running game is inconsistent at best, players across the board are committing too many penalties and the offense as a whole doesn’t appear to have a sense of identity or direction.
Now Alabama finds itself outside the top 10 of The Associated Press’ poll for the first time in eight years. With the Crimson Tide absent from the playoff conversation, hope seems a long way off. Whether that remains true for the rest of the season is anyone’s guess.
And while it’s unfair to pin all the blame on the quarterbacks (see above), a critical eye has to start there. It’s the most important position on the field and the sharp decline has been startling. Alabama is a program that passed its QB baton from Jalen Hurts to Tua Tagovailoa to Mac Jones to Bryce Young. Depending on how you count Hurts’ time at Oklahoma, you’re talking about one or two Heisman Trophy winners and two Heisman finalists.
Coaches around the SEC last season said privately Young was covering up a lot of Alabama’s flaws, including the mediocre play on the line and at receiver that continues today, but no one thought to look further down the depth chart at what would be missing once he left. To go from four consecutive future NFL starting quarterbacks to the rotation of backups we saw Saturday against South Florida boggles the mind.
Jalen Milroe, Young’s former backup who began the season as the starter and was benched after throwing two interceptions in a loss to Texas, didn’t take a single snap in Tampa. Tyler Buchner, the late addition from Notre Dame, got the start and completed 5 of 14 passes for 34 yards before he was pulled. His replacement, redshirt freshman Ty Simpson, wasn’t much better, running for a 1-yard touchdown and completing 5 of 9 pass attempts for 73 yards.
Against an unranked opponent it was favored to beat by five touchdowns, against a team that had given up 41 points to Western Kentucky in the season opener, Alabama had to grind out a 17-3 win that ranked among the ugliest of coach Nick Saban’s 16-year tenure. Buchner and Simpson posted an 18.5 QBR in the game, the fourth lowest in 224 games under Saban and the lowest since 2009 against South Carolina.
Forget the five sacks, the 13 incompletions and that paltry QBR. Forget all those penalties that wiped points off the board. The video of a rain-soaked Saban leaving the field during a lightning delay told the story of a frustrating day.
Afterward, Saban was noncommittal about next steps.
But Monday, he seemed to have made up his mind.
“This is all I’m going to say about this,” Saban said. “Jalen really showed the leadership I was looking for in terms of supporting his teammates.”
Milroe, he added, “has earned the opportunity to be the quarterback.”
But if Milroe has another performance like the one against Texas — where he telegraphed his passes and threw a pair of back-breaking interceptions — will Saban stick with him? Saban craves consistency from his quarterbacks and values the ability to take care of the football seemingly above all else. Old school, he’s said on more than one occasion that if a drive ends in a kick, whether it’s a field goal or a punt, that’s fine by him.
So pay attention because the drama might not be over yet.
But before asking where Saban and Alabama go from here, you have to ask how they got here in the first place. How is it that no one was ready to replace Young after he left school as the No. 1 overall draft pick? How did it fall to Milroe, Buchner and Simpson? How did it get to the point that the break in case of emergency option — true freshman Dylan Lonergan — might have his number called before he’s ready?
The answer is complicated. Some sources close to the program say it’s as simple as the program’s good luck finally running out. The Hurts-Tagovailoa-Jones-Young run was unprecedented for a reason, they say. But other, more cynical sources, question the recruiting and development at the position the last two-plus years.
Milroe might not have been Alabama’s pick in the 2021 class had Drake Maye not decommitted in March 2020, opting instead to sign at North Carolina. Fast-forward to the end of last season and Alabama was back sniffing around Maye, according to multiple sources, in the event that he entered the transfer portal, which he didn’t.
By the time it became clear neither Milroe nor Simpson had separated themselves — after going through all of spring practice — Alabama was too late to find a top quarterback in the transfer portal. Sam Hartman had already gone to Notre Dame and Brennan Armstrong had already gone to NC State. The rest of the SEC had already cleaned up with Kentucky signing Devin Leary, who broke Philip Rivers’ single-season school record for touchdowns at NC State, and Ole Miss signing Spencer Sanders, an All Big-12 pick at Oklahoma State, and Walker Howard, a former five-star who spent his freshman year at LSU.
The rumor mill briefly connected Alabama and Miami’s Tyler Van Dyke in April; the speculation was so rampant that the Canes’ official X account posted a not-so-subtle message affirming Van Dyke’s commitment to the program. When the music stopped and the portal quit spinning, it was Buchner, who would have been Hartman’s backup, that became the best option remaining. And even then, Buchner was brought in not with the expectation that he’d be a slam-dunk starter but rather as someone who could compete and push Milroe and Simpson.
Maybe he did that. Maybe he didn’t. But Simpson started the season third on the depth chart for a reason and Milroe, despite being the starter the first two games, didn’t show noticeable improvement in his first real test against Texas. A former SEC coach said Milroe simply isn’t skilled enough in the short-to-intermediate passing game, which is what Alabama needs to keep defenses honest.
A Power 5 defensive coordinator said Milroe was essentially the same player he watched on film from a year ago: “Big play or nothing.” But in Milroe’s defense, he’s had to deal with a not insignificant amount of turnover during his time at Alabama. Former offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian — a wizard with the run-pass option — recruited him and left to become the head coach at Texas two weeks after he signed his letter of intent. Then, when the opportunity to start finally came this year, the O.C. who coached Milroe the last three seasons, Bill O’Brien, left to join the New England Patriots.
That’s not all. Alex Mortensen, the analyst and behind-the-scenes QB guru who spent nine seasons at Alabama, left in December to join the new staff at UAB. On Monday, Georgia coach Kirby Smart said of Mortensen, “He was at Alabama behind all the offenses — worked with Bill O’Brien, worked with Sark, was there when I was there. I have a lot of respect for Alex.”
Meanwhile, new offensive coordinator Tommy Rees has pulled back some on the RPO game (down 3.1% from 2021-22, down 7.3% from 2019-20) that might suit Milroe’s skill set best.
“He’s in a tough spot, but I do think he’s talented,” Rees said of Milroe. “He throws a great deep ball, can create on his own. He just doesn’t have that ability to make the off-platform throws that Bryce Young did.”
Here’s the thing, though: Alabama doesn’t need any of its quarterbacks to be Bryce Young to have a more effective offense. At this point, it would take another Jake Coker — someone who can manage the game, take the occasional deep shot and limit bad plays. In fact, last week Saban compared the offense’s struggles to what the team went through in 2015 when Coker and Cooper Bateman competed for the starting job through the first three games of the season, including a heart-breaking loss to Ole Miss that prompted some in the media to speculate that Alabama’s dynasty was at its end. Coker won the job, the Tide ran the table and won the national championship.
But that optimistic narrative has one glaring plot hole: This team doesn’t appear to have another Derrick Henry to feed at running back. Henry set an SEC single-season record with 1,986 rushing yards in 2015 and won the Heisman.
With Saban reinserting Milroe into the starting lineup against Ole Miss on Saturday (3:30 p.m. ET, CBS), will he use his speed to field a more run-heavy offense? It’s certainly possible. But can the offensive line support it? And will the receivers hold up their end of the bargain? And will the team stop shooting itself in the foot with penalties and unforced errors?
Picking a lane on offense is a good start to figuring things out, but it’s going to take a lot more than that for Alabama to get back on track and back in the playoff hunt.
Until then, the questions about who should start at quarterback will dominate the conversation and the doubts over the health of Saban’s dynasty won’t end.
Julian Sayin, the No. 1-ranked dual-threat quarterback and No. 3 overall prospect in next year’s class, has been committed to Alabama for nearly a year now and represents hope for the future. But he can’t get to Tuscaloosa soon enough.
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Dan Wetzel
During college football’s Bowl Championship Series era, the sport’s opposition to an expanded, let alone expansive, playoff could be summarized in one colorful quote by then-Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee.
“They will wrench a playoff system out of my cold, dead hands,” Gee said in 2007.
We are happy to report that while college football does, indeed, have a playoff, Gee is still very much alive. The 81-year-old retired just this week after a second stint leading West Virginia University.
What is dead and buried, though, is college football’s staunch resistance to extending its postseason field. After decades of ignoring complaints and the promise of additional revenue to claim that just two teams was more than enough, plans to move from 12 participants to 16 were underway before last season’s inaugural 12-teamer even took place.
A once-static sport now moves at light speed, future implications be damned.
Fire. Ready. Aim.
So maybe the best bit of current news is that college football’s two ruling parties — the SEC and Big Ten — can’t agree on how the new 16-team field would be selected. It has led to a pause on playoff expansion.
Maybe, just maybe, it means no expansion will occur by 2026, as first planned, and college football can let the 12-team model cook a little to accurately assess what changes — if any — are even needed.
“We have a 12-team playoff, five conference champions,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said this week. “That could stay if we can’t agree.”
Good. After all, what’s the rush?
The 2025 season will play out with a 12-team format featuring automatic bids for five conference champions and seven at-large spots. Gone is last year’s clunky requirement that the top four seeds could go only to conference champs — elevating Boise State and Arizona State and unbalancing the field.
That alone was progress built on real-world experience. It should be instructive.
The SEC wants a 16-team model but with, as is currently the case, automatic bids going to the champions in the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC and the best of the so-called Group of 6. The rest of the field would be at-large selections.
The Big Ten says it will not back such a proposal until the SEC agrees to play nine conference games (up from its current eight). Instead, it wants a 16-team system that gives four automatic bids apiece to the Big Ten and SEC, two each to the ACC and Big 12, one to the Group of 6 and then three at-large spots.
It’s been dubbed the “4-4-2-2-1-3” because college athletic leaders love ridiculous parlances almost as much as they love money.
While the ACC, Big 12 and others have offered opinions — mostly siding with the SEC — legislatively, the decision rests with the sport’s two big-dog conferences.
Right now, neither side is budging. A compromise might still be made, of course. The supposed deadline to set the 2026 system is Nov. 30. And Sankey actually says he prefers the nine-game SEC schedule, even if his coaches oppose it.
However, the possibility of the status quo standing for a bit longer remains.
What the Big Ten has proposed is a dramatic shift for a sport that has been bombarded with dramatic shifts — conference realignment, the transfer portal, NIL, revenue sharing, etc.
The league wants to stage multiple “play-in” games on conference championship weekend. The top two teams in the league would meet for the league title (as is currently the case), but the third- and fourth-place teams would play the fifth- and sixth-place teams to determine the other automatic bids.
Extend this out among all the conferences and you have up to a 26-team College Football Playoff (with 22 teams in a play-in situation). This would dramatically change the way the sport works — devaluing the stakes for nonconference games, for example. And some mediocre teams would essentially get a playoff bid — in the Big Ten’s case, the sixth seed last year was an Iowa team that finished 8-5.
Each conference would have more high-value inventory to sell to broadcast partners, but it’s not some enormous windfall. Likewise, four more first-round playoff games would need to find television slots and relevance.
Is anyone sure this is necessary? Do we need 16 at all, let alone with multibids?
In the 12-team format, the first round wasn’t particularly competitive — with a 19.3-point average margin of victory. It’s much like the first round of the NFL playoffs, designed mostly to make sure no true contender is left out.
Perhaps last year was an outlier. And maybe future games will be close. Or maybe they’ll be even more lopsided. Wouldn’t it be prudent to find out?
While there were complaints about the selection committee picking SMU and/or Indiana over Alabama, it wasn’t some egregious slight. Arguments will happen no matter how big the field. Besides, the Crimson Tide lost to two 6-6 teams last year. Expansion means a team with a similar résumé can cruise in.
Is that a good thing?
Whatever the decision, it is being made with little to no real-world data — pro or con. Letting a few 12-team fields play out, providing context and potentially unexpected consequences, sure wouldn’t hurt.
You don’t have to be Gordon Gee circa 2007 to favor letting this simmer and be studied before leaping toward another round of expansion.
CHICAGO — NASCAR is pressing pause on its Chicago Street Race, answering at least one major question about its schedule for next season.
NASCAR raced on a street course in downtown Chicago on the first weekend in July each of the last three years. But it had a three-year contract with the city, leaving the future of the event in question.
Writing to Mayor Brandon Johnson on Friday, race president Julie Giese said the plan is to explore the potential of a new event weekend with his office and other community leaders while also working on a more efficient course build and breakdown.
“Our goal is for the Chicago Street Race to return in 2027 with an event that further enhances the experience for residents and visitors alike, as we work together towards a new potential date, shorter build schedule, and additional tourism draws,” Giese wrote in her letter to Johnson.
Giese said NASCAR is keeping its Chicago Street Race office and plans to continue its community partnerships.
“We deeply value our relationship with the City of Chicago and remain steadfast in our commitment to being a good neighbor and partner,” she said in the letter.
NASCAR is replacing its Chicago stop with a street race in San Diego.
A message was left Friday seeking comment from Johnson’s office.
NASCAR’s Chicago weekend featured Xfinity and Cup Series races on a 12-turn, 2.2-mile course against the backdrop of Lake Michigan and Grant Park – to go along with a festival-like atmosphere with music and entertainment options.
The goal was an event that appealed to both a new audience in one of NASCAR’s most important regions and the most ardent racing fans. NASCAR used to race at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, a 45-mile drive from downtown, but it pulled out after the 2019 season.
Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, was in charge when the three-year contract for the downtown weekend was finalized.
It wasn’t exactly a popular move in Chicago. Local businesses and residents were frustrated by the street closures in a heavily trafficked area for tourists in the summer. But organizers shrunk the construction schedule from 43 days in 2023 to 25 this year, winning over some of the race’s critics.
Drivers and their teams had some concerns about the course ahead of the first weekend. But the setup was widely praised by the time the third year rolled around – both the course and the ability to walk to the circuit from their downtown hotel.
Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson called Chicago “probably my favorite event in NASCAR each year.”
The racing in downtown Chicago has been dominated by Shane van Gisbergen, who won the Xfinity and Cup races this year from the pole. He also won in Chicago in his Cup debut in 2023 and last year’s Xfinity Series race.
“I love the track,” he said after this year’s Cup win. “It’s a cool place to come to. You feel a nice vibe. You feel a good vibe in the mornings walking to the track with the fans. It’s pretty unique like that.”
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