Is Julian Sayin the next great Alabama quarterback?
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Paolo Uggetti, ESPN
CARLSBAD, Calif. — The way Julian Sayin played Madden was one of the very first tells.
At an early age, Dan Sayin noticed how his youngest son utilized motions, audibles and playcalls in the video game to fool the defense. When Pop Warner entered the picture, Dan and the other coaches found it easy to have 9-year-old Julian be part of a no-huddle offense with boards on the sideline signaling one of their 15 plays.
“They’re smarter than you think,” Dan said about Julian and his older brother Aidan, who quarterbacks for Penn. “Julian has always been very pragmatic, he’s never been indecisive, he’s always just moving forward.”
This is a kid who took his development into his own hands in middle school by messaging Danny Hernandez, a private quarterback trainer who has worked with 2023 NFL No. 1 draft pick Bryce Young and USC’s Caleb Williams, on Instagram and asking if he could come train. It didn’t take long for Hernandez to see how special Sayin could be. By eighth grade, plenty of others were taking note, filling up the family mailbox with offers. And eventually, at the end of his sophomore year, so did Alabama.
“They did offer late,” Dan said, which he said made him skeptical at first. “Getting one from Nick Saban was different. We used to root against Alabama, just because they were so good. But that’s also why you’d want to go there. When you have a pragmatic decision to make, you don’t want to go with the underdog.”
At one point this season, after losing to Texas and seemingly looking lost at the quarterback position, Alabama felt like the underdog for the first time in a while. Now, as signing day arrives, its situation has changed: Jalen Milroe has turned into one of the best quarterbacks in the nation and led the Tide back to the College Football Playoff after beating Georgia in the SEC championship. While Milroe announced he will return next season, Alabama’s long-term future still remains anchored to an 18-year-old who is No. 3 in the 2024 ESPN 300 (No. 1 among quarterbacks) and hails from a sleepy beach town about as far as you can get from Tuscaloosa.
Sayin may play the part of lanky surfer kid well, but his steadfastness in wanting to play at Alabama and face SEC competition has made him the ideal player for a program that has made its name on elite recruiting and development.
In fact, Sayin isn’t just enrolling early at Alabama; he visited with the team before the season to watch the Tide install their offense. The five-star is already living there, having moved in this past weekend. He will be with the team during its practices in the lead-up to its College Football Playoff semifinal matchup against Michigan.
“He’s not trying to be Alabama’s savior,” Sayin’s high school head coach, Thadd MacNeal, said. “But he wanted to play for Coach Saban. He wanted to play in a premier conference against the best players because that’s who he wants to be.”
IN THE LAST row of the Carlsbad High School football field bleachers, a group of kids has found a standing-room-only spot to commentate on the game below. They are fellow football players — some, hopeful ones — from other local high schools or junior high schools. One of the younger ones makes the sudden declaration.
“If Julian throws a touchdown pass on this next play, I’m gonna go to Carlsbad.”
It’s a cool October night at Carlsbad High School, 35 miles north of San Diego, and only about 35 football fields east of the Pacific. A place where you can feel the ocean, so even when you can’t see it, it’s easy to relax. But on this particular night, when it feels like the entire town has turned up for the homecoming game, the crowd is getting more tense by the minute.
Sayin’s Lancers are facing rival La Costa Canyon, which is wringing everything out of the night’s star player. Even without following the ball, it’s hard not to notice the 6-foot-2 Sayin, who stands tall among his teammates and opponents.
Watch him play long enough and you get the sense that, if Carlsbad wanted to, Sayin could drop back and make some kind of throw that would remind those in attendance who the best player on the field is. Instead, MacNeal opts for a more methodical approach: a pro-style offense that is balanced until it can’t be. That’s when Sayin makes magic happen.
On the next play after the quip from the top of the stands, Sayin obliges the young fan. Facing a long third down, he finds a cutting receiver down the field and the ensuing dime doesn’t just result in a first down, but a 37-yard touchdown.
The kid can’t believe it. “Oh my God, he did it!”
Every third or fourth down feels like an opportunity for Sayin to show just why he’s a five-star prospect heading to Alabama. A couple of drives later, Sayin casually launches a 50-yard throw that feathers its way into the hands of a receiver in the end zone. After going down by four points in the fourth quarter, he doesn’t flinch. Sayin leads a game-winning drive that ends with him throwing a 7-yard laser for a touchdown, taking off his helmet and showing more emotion than he has all game long.
“I’m a kid from a surfer town in Southern California, so I’m kind of just pretty laid back,” Sayin said in his San Diego drawl. “But I also have that fire and passion for the game.”
It takes a 443-yard, six-touchdown performance for Sayin’s Lancers to outlast their opponent. Without him, the result — and the Lancers’ ensuing 10-1 season — would not be the same.
“We can do things with him we can’t do with other quarterbacks,” said MacNeal, who also coached Sayin’s older brother. “He’s a very confident kid who has complete command of our offense.”
“He’s a player that knows how to generate power in small spaces,” Hernandez said. “He knows how to create angles and how to change up speed in order to put himself in the position to make every type of throw there is.”
MacNeal not only recognized Sayin’s potential but created an environment in which he could grow and flourish. That meant giving Sayin freedom within the offensive system, holding weekly film sessions and preparing him for the next stage of his career by trusting him with more than most.
“I know this offense pretty well now, and Coach Mac trusts me with being able to change plays and get us in the right situations and adjust on the fly,” said Sayin, who has started since his sophomore season. “I know to succeed at the next level, that’s what you have to do.”
As Hernandez explained, Sayin’s football IQ, spatial awareness and fluidity were already part of his résumé. MacNeal provided the system catered to feature Sayin’s skills while Hernandez continued to refine his fundamentals. Those traits, alongside miles of room to grow in his decision-making and athleticism, piqued then-Alabama offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien’s interest.
“Those guys say they love what we do [with our offense] because there’s a lot of crossover, even if it isn’t at the same volume,” MacNeal said. “If you watch [Sayin] on tape, he’s under center, he’s shotgun, we’re in RPO, we do play-action, we power run, we screen. They love that he moves around, that he goes through his progressions well. I’m lucky because I can do a lot with him.”
O’Brien took the lead on Sayin’s recruitment, explaining how Alabama’s offense thrived under Bryce Young and how Sayin would be utilized in a similar way. While O’Brien isn’t around to see it happen after taking the New England Patriots offensive coordinator job in 2022, it was Saban who delivered the lasting impression on Sayin and the rest of his inner circle.
“Saban really did his homework,” Hernandez said. “He was really able to point out a lot of details that he felt that Julian had in his game and how he fit and what they do there.”
“The whole pitch is, ‘You want to come here, we’d love to have you, but nobody’s gonna kiss your ass. You’re gonna work your ass off. You’re gonna play against the best and no place will prepare you better for the next level than Alabama. And if you want it, we’re here,'” Dan said of the recruiting experience with Alabama.
A COUPLE OF days after his impressive win over La Costa Canyon, Sayin is parked in front of the television at his home in Carlsbad. It’s Sunday and the Philadelphia Eagles are facing the Miami Dolphins, which means Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen Hurts are squaring off. The two former Alabama quarterbacks who were both part of the 2017 title-winning team are now two of the best quarterbacks at the highest level of the sport.
Sayin envisions himself there among players who share a college experience having been part of the program with the most first-round draft picks (41) since the turn of the century.
“What they do just translates to the NFL,” Sayin said. “I trust that surrounding me with the best players will give me the best opportunity to go make plays.”
There was a point during Sayin’s recruitment when his final destination was up in the air. According to Dan and MacNeal, Notre Dame was a close contestant. But once QB prospect C.J. Carr (the grandson of former Michigan coach Lloyd Carr) committed to the Irish, Sayin focused on his preference to play in the SEC.
“He narrowed it down to Georgia, Bama and LSU,” Dan said. “If you want to go play against the best corners every week in practice and be protected by the best offensive linemen on Saturdays, those are three spots where you go.”
Alabama’s pitch appealed to Sayin. It wasn’t handing him a neatly packaged future with guaranteed starts or any delusions of grandeur. It was football-focused, while alluding to its national brand and the NIL potential that could come with success. Most importantly for Sayin, it offered him an opportunity to compete from the moment he stepped foot on campus. And hearing it from Saban — who Sayin and his father said is “the greatest coach in college football history” — made all the difference.
“It’s pretty cool, he’s kind of just like on TV,” Julian said of being recruited by Saban. “He’s not gonna tell you how much he needs you at Alabama or how much he wants you to go there. He’ll say we’ll definitely have you and give you the opportunity to go compete. But nothing’s gonna be given to you.”
Julian is all too familiar with the concept. From backyard games at an early age, he was always battling against Aidan, nipping at his heels in every competitive arena.
“He’s so comfortable in his own skin,” Hernandez said. “When he makes mistakes, he will always correct it on the next play, so he’s never really rattled. He’s a very confident kid who loves competition and knows he has to earn it, but feels like he can.”
As a result, Sayin has gone from a kid who didn’t play for a Southern California powerhouse to not flinching at the prospect of being the player Alabama wants as its future quarterback. Of course, the nature of college football makes nothing a guarantee, but Julian’s self-assuredness and attitude make him well-suited for whatever may come.
“I wanted to go to a place where nothing was really given to me,” Julian said. “I gotta go earn my spot.”
Mistakes and growing pains will surely arrive. Dan said Alabama has already pointed out that its nutritionists will help Julian bulk up in preparation to face SEC defenses. MacNeal, meanwhile, knows that while some concepts may be similar, the speed at which things happen at Division I could be a culture shock. For Sayin, however, the struggle will be part of the experience, one that will be far different from anything he has seen bouncing between beach towns in San Diego County. It’s what he signed up for once he said yes to the Tide.
“It’ll definitely be different from what I’m used to,” Sayin said of moving across the country. “But I’m also excited to go be somewhere where it’s all football, all the time.”
With no more waves for Sayin to catch, Tuscaloosa awaits.
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Andrea Adelson
ORLANDO, Fla. — Scott Frost walks into the UCF football building and into his office, the one he used the last time he had this job, eight years ago. The shades are drawn, just like they used to be. There are drawings from his three kids tacked to the walls. There are still trophies sitting on a shelf.
He still parks in the same spot before he walks into that same building and sits at the same desk. The only thing that has changed is that the desk is positioned in a different part of the room.
But the man doing all the same things at the University of Central Florida is a different Scott Frost than the one who left following that undefeated 2017 season to take the head coach job at Nebraska.
UCF might look the same, but the school is different now, too. The Knights are now in a Power 4 conference, and there is now a 12-team College Football Playoff that affords them the opportunity to play for national championships — as opposed to self-declaring them. Just outside his office, construction is underway to upgrade the football stadium. The same, but different.
“I know I’m a wiser person and smarter football coach,” Frost said during a sit-down interview with ESPN. “When you’re young, you think you have it all figured out. I don’t think you really get better as a person unless you go through really good things, and really bad things. I just know I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
Out on the practice field, Frost feels the most at home — he feels comfort in going back to the place that has defined nearly every day of his life. As a young boy, he learned the game from his mom and dad, both football coaches, then thrived as a college and NFL player before going into coaching.
He coaches up his players with a straightforwardness that quarterbacks coach McKenzie Milton remembers fondly from their previous time together at UCF. Milton started at quarterback on the 2017 undefeated team, and the two remained close after Frost left.
“I see the same version of him from when I was here as a player,” Milton said. “Even though the dynamic in college football has changed dramatically with the portal and NIL, I think Coach Frost is one of the few coaches that can still bring a group of guys together and turn them into a team, just with who he is and what he’s done and what he’s been through in his life. He knows what it looks like to succeed, both as a coach and a player.”
Since his return, Frost has had to adjust to those changes to college football, but he said, “I love coming into work every day. We’ve got the right kids who love football. We’re working them hard. They want to be pushed. They want to be challenged. We get to practice with palm trees and sunshine and, we’re playing big-time football. But it’s also just not the constant stress meat grinder of some other places.”
Meat grinder of some other places.
Might he mean a place such as Nebraska?
“You can think what you want,” Frost said. “One thing I told myself — I’m never going to talk about that. It just doesn’t feel good to talk about. I’ll get asked 100 questions. This is about UCF. I just don’t have anything to say.”
Frost says he has no regrets about leaving UCF, even though he didn’t get the results he had hoped for at his alma mater. When Nebraska decided to part ways with coach Mike Riley in 2017, Frost seemed the best, most obvious candidate to replace him. He had been the starting quarterback on the 1997 team, the last Nebraska team to win a national title.
He now had the coaching résumé to match. Frost had done the unthinkable at UCF — taking a program that was winless the season before he arrived, to undefeated and the talk of the college football world just two years later.
But he could not ignore the pull of Nebraska and the opportunities that came along with power conference football.
“I was so happy here,” Frost said. “We went undefeated and didn’t get a chance to win a championship, at least on the field. You are always striving to reach higher goals. I had always told myself I wasn’t going to leave here unless there was a place that you can legitimately go and win a national championship. It was a tough decision because I didn’t want to leave regardless of which place it was.”
Indeed, Frost maintains he was always happy at UCF. But he also knew returning to Nebraska would make others happy, too.
“I think I kind of knew that wasn’t best for me,” he said. “It was what some other people wanted me to do to some degree.”
In four-plus seasons with the Cornhuskers, Frost went 16-31 — including 5-22 in one-score games. He was fired three games into the 2022 season after a home loss to Georgia Southern.
After Frost was fired, he moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where his wife has family. He reflected on what happened during his tenure with the Cornhuskers but also about what he wanted to do with the rest of his career. He tried to stay connected to the game, coaching in the U.S. Army Bowl, a high school all-star game in Frisco, Texas, in December 2022. Milton coached alongside him, and distinctly remembers a conversation they had.
“He said, ‘It’s my goal to get back to UCF one day,'” Milton said. “At that time, I was like, ‘I pray to God that happens.'”
If that was the ultimate goal, Frost needed to figure out how to position himself to get back there. While he contemplated his future, he coached his son’s flag football team to a championship. Frost found the 5- and 6-year-olds he coached “listen better than 19-year-olds sometimes.”
Ultimately, he decided on a career reboot in the NFL. Frost had visited the Rams during their offseason program, and when a job came open in summer 2024, Rams coach Sean McVay immediately reached out.
Frost was hired as a senior analyst, primarily helping with special teams but also working with offense and defense.
“It was more just getting another great leader in the building, someone who has been a head coach, that has wisdom and a wealth of experience to be able to learn from,” McVay told ESPN. “His ability to be able to communicate to our players from a great coaching perspective, but also have the empathy and the understanding from when he played — all of those things were really valuable.”
McVay said he and Frost had long discussions about handling the challenges that come with falling short as a head coach.
“There’s strength in the vulnerability,” McVay said. “I felt that from him. There’s a real power in the perspective that you have from those different experiences. If you can really look at some of the things that maybe didn’t go down the way you wanted to within the framework of your role and responsibility, real growth can occur. I saw that in him.”
Frost says his time with the Rams rejuvenated him.
“It brought me back,” Frost said. “Sometimes when you’re a head coach or maybe even a coordinator, you forget how fun it is to be around the game when it’s not all on you all the time. What I did was a very small part, and we certainly weren’t going to win or lose based on every move that I made, and I didn’t have to wear the losses and struggle for the victories like you do when you’re a head coach. I’m so grateful to those guys.”
UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir got a call from then-head coach Gus Malzahn last November. Malzahn, on the verge of finishing his fourth season at UCF, was contemplating becoming offensive coordinator at Florida State. Given all the responsibilities on his desk as head coach — from NIL to the transfer portal to roster management — he found the idea of going back to playcalling appealing. Mohajir started preparing a list of candidates and was told Thanksgiving night that Malzahn had planned to step down.
Though Frost previously worked at UCF under athletics director Danny White, he and Mohajir had a preexisting relationship. Mohajir said he reached out to Frost after he was fired at Nebraska to gauge his interest in returning to UCF as offensive coordinator under Malzahn. But Frost was not ready.
This time around, Mohajir learned quickly that Frost had interest in returning as head coach. Mohajir called McVay and Rams general manager Les Snead. They told him Frost did anything that was asked of him, including making copies around the office.
“They said, ‘You would never know he was the head coach at a major college program.” Mohajir also called former Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts to get a better understanding about what happened with the Cornhuskers.
“Fits are a huge piece, and not everybody fits,” Mohajir said.
After eight conversations, Mohajir decided he wanted to meet Frost in person. They met at an airport hotel in Dallas.
“He was motivated,” Mohajir said. “We went from coast to coast, talked to coordinators, head coaches, pro guys, all kinds of different folks. And at the end of the day, I really believe that Scott wanted the job the most.”
The first day back in Orlando, Dec. 8, was a blur. Frost woke up at 3:45 a.m. in California to be able to make it to Florida in time for his introductory news conference with his family.
When they pulled into the campus, his first time back since he left in 2017, Frost said he was in a fog. It took another 24 hours for him and his wife, Ashley, to take a deep exhale.
“Rather than bouncing around chasing NFL jobs, we thought maybe we would be able to plant some roots here and have our kids be in a stable place for a while at a place that I really enjoyed coaching and that I think it has a chance to evolve into a place that could win a lot of football games,” Frost said. “All that together was just enough to get me to come back.”
The natural question now is whether Frost can do what he did during his first tenure.
That 2017 season stands as the only winning season of his head coaching career, but it carries so much weight with UCF fans because of its significance as both the best season in school history, and one that changed both its own future and college football.
After UCF finished 13-0, White self-declared the Knights national champions. Locked out of the four-team playoff after finishing No. 12 in the final CFP standings, White started lobbying for more attention to be paid to schools outside the power conferences.
That season also positioned UCF to pounce during the next wave of realignment. Sure enough, in 2023, the Knights began play in a Power 4 conference for the first time as Big 12 members. This past season, the CFP expanded to 12 teams. Unlike 2017, UCF now has a defined path to play for a national title and no longer has to go undefeated and then pray for a shot. Win the Big 12 championship, no matter the record, and UCF is in the playoff.
But Frost cautions those who expect the clock to turn back to 2017.
“I don’t think there’s many people out there that silly,” Frost said. “People joke about that with me, that they’re going to expect you go into undefeated in the first year. I think the fans are a little more realistic than that.”
The game, of course, is different. Had the transfer portal and NIL existed when Frost was at UCF during his first tenure, he might not have been able to keep the 2017 team together. The 2018 team, which went undefeated under Josh Heupel before losing to LSU in the Fiesta Bowl, might not have stayed together, either.
This upcoming season, UCF will receive a full share of television revenue from the Big 12, after receiving a half share (estimated $18 million) in each of his first two seasons. While that is more than what it received in the AAC, it is less than what other Big 12 schools received, making it harder to compete immediately. It also struggled with NIL funding. As a result, in its first two years in the conference, UCF went 5-13 in Big 12 play and 10-15 overall.
Assuming the House v. NCAA settlement goes into effect this summer, Mohajir says UCF is aiming to spend the full $20.5 million, including fully funding football.
“It’s like we moved to the fancy neighborhood, and we got a job that’s going to pay us money over time, and we’re going to do well over time, but we’re stretching a little to be there right now, and that requires a lot of effort from a lot of people and a lot of commitment from a lot of people,” Frost said. “So far, the help that we’ve gotten has been impressive.”
Mohajir points out that UCF has had five coaching changes over the past 10 years, dating back to the final season under George O’Leary in 2015, when the Knights went 0-12. Frost says he wants to be in for the long term, and Mohajir hopes consistency at head coach will be an added benefit. Mohajir believes UCF is getting the best of Frost in this moment and scoffs at any questions about whether rehiring him will work again.
“Based on what I’m seeing right now, it will absolutely work,” Mohajir said. “But I don’t really look at it as ‘working again.’ It’s not ‘again.’ It’s, ‘Will it work?’ Because it’s a different era.”
To that end, Frost says success is not recreating 2017 and going undefeated. Rather, Frost said, “If our group now can help us become competitive in the Big 12, and then, from time to time, compete for championships and make us more relevant nationally, I think we’ll have done our job to help catapult UCF again.”
You could say he is looking for the same result. He’s just taking a different route there.
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Max Olson
Houston transfer safety A.J. Haulcy committed to LSU on Sunday, his agency, A&P Sports, told ESPN.
Haulcy, the top player still available and No. 1 safety in ESPN’s spring transfer portal rankings, committed to the Tigers after taking an official visit Sunday. Miami, Ole Miss and SMU were also contenders for his pledge.
The 6-foot, 215-pound senior defensive back has started 32 games over his three college seasons and earned first-team All-Big 12 honors in 2024 after producing 74 tackles, 8 pass breakups and 5 interceptions, which tied for most in the conference.
LSU has assembled one of the top incoming transfer classes in the country this offseason with 18 signees, including six players — wide receivers Barion Brown (Kentucky) and Nic Anderson (Oklahoma), linemen Braelin Moore (Virginia Tech) and Josh Thompson (Northwestern), cornerback Mansoor Delane (Virginia Tech) and defensive end Patrick Payton (LSU) — who ranked among the top 60 in ESPN’s winter transfer rankings.
The Tigers also landed USF transfer Bernard Gooden, one of the most coveted defensive tackles in the spring transfer window.
Haulcy began his career at New Mexico in 2022, earning a starting role as a true freshman and recording 87 tackles, including a career-high 24 against Fresno State, and two interceptions. The Houston native entered the transfer portal at the end of the season and came home to play for the Cougars.
As a sophomore in 2023, Haulcy recorded a team-high 98 tackles and received votes for Big 12 Defensive Newcomer of the Year from the league’s coaches.
Haulcy chose to re-enter the portal April 21 after Houston’s spring game, as did starting cornerback Jeremiah Wilson, who’ll continue his career at Florida State. Wilson and Haulcy were the Nos. 11 and 12 players, respectively, in ESPN’s spring transfer rankings.
BYU picked up a pair of key transfer portal additions Saturday, as brothers Bear and Tiger Bachmeier told ESPN that they have committed to play for the Cougars next season.
The brothers are transferring from Stanford and project to be key players of the immediate and long-term plans for the BYU program.
Bear, a quarterback, committed Saturday morning at the end of his visit, he told ESPN. He is a class of 2025 recruit who committed to Stanford out of high school and enrolled there this spring.
Both Bachmeiers elected to transfer in the wake of Stanford’s dismissal of head coach Troy Taylor in March. After visiting BYU coach Kalani Sitake’s program in recent days, the brothers committed.
For Bear, he is expected to be one of the backups for successful incumbent quarterback Jake Retzlaff in 2025 and compete for the starting job at BYU in 2026.
Bear was attracted to BYU’s open offensive scheme and a rich history of quarterbacks that includes a strong recent run under offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick. He also referenced BYU’s historical success, which stretches from Jim McMahon to Ty Detmer to Steve Young.
“The ability to come in and win games and [Coach] Roderick’s scheme and the pedigree of quarterbacks they have produced in history and recently is enticing,” Bear told ESPN.
Tiger told ESPN he committed to BYU later Saturday. He’ll arrive at BYU having graduated from Stanford in two-and-a-half years with a degree in computer science. He’ll enroll in a graduate program at BYU, he said.
Tiger will be expected to be an immediate contributor at wide receiver. He caught 46 balls over two seasons at Stanford for 476 yards and two touchdowns. He has two years of eligibility remaining.
Bear and Tiger are the second and third brothers to play major college football in their family. Their older brother, Hank Bachmeier, played quarterback at Boise State, Louisiana Tech and Wake Forest, where his college career concluded last year.
There is one more Bachmeier brother remaining: Buck Bachmeier will be a freshman in high school in the fall.
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