Biggest QB Competition in College Football Reportedly Has an Early Leader
The offseason for the Alabama Crimson Tide has been marked by a monster of a quarterback controversy, and the time has come to settle it on the practice field.
Last season, during the NCAA championship game, Alabama benched Jalen Hurts, installed Tua Tagovailoa as the quarterback, and won a thrilling come-from-behind win in overtime over the Georgia Bulldogs in one of the greatest championship games in any sport in this century.
Hurts, a senior, now finds himself fighting for his starting job, and things may not be going well for him against his sophomore teammate and rival.
And while coach Nick Saban isn’t saying a word, sources around the team are giving the media reports that are raising alarm bells for Team Hurts:
Disclaimer: this is the first scrimmage of camp, and the only practice I’ve seen. But from what I watched today, I’ll be shocked if Tua isn’t day 1 starter, and it isn’t close. Don’t expect an announcement prior to opening kickoff tho..
— Will Lowery (@jwlowery29) August 11, 2018
In the fall scrimmage, while nobody released an actual box score, Tagovailoa was reported to have thrown three touchdowns without an interception, while Hurts threw three interceptions and did not account for a touchdown.
Matt Zenitz of AL.com, while not at the event because Alabama does not allow media at its scrimmages, nonetheless had his text messages light up, and he wrote about what he was able to glean secondhand.
As the messages rolled in, saying things like “Tua with a long pass right on the money, another good ball from Tua, and another, touchdown pass to No. 44 (sophomore tight end Kendrick James),” it became clear that observers actually at the practice thought Hurts is going to lose that starting job.
How much of the scoring was due to Tua and how much was due to Alabama’s receivers shaking their own team’s defense out of its shoes is a matter of debate.
On one of the touchdowns, according to Zenitz, sophomore Jerry Jeudy put a great move over on the defense then just straight-up outran them to the end zone.
Tagovailoa also threw a few questionable-judgment balls out there into traffic, according to Zenitz, possibly showing a “gunslinger mentality” in the Brett Favre mold that tends to create feast-or-famine results.
Saban, for his part, simply reminded media to pump the brakes a little rather than getting carried away by secondhand reports.
“We’re going to evaluate the quarterback situation,”Saban said, according to 247Sports. “We’re going to keep looking at the guys. What somebody did today or didn’t do today is not going to win or lose him the job, aight. It’s going to be a cumulative effect and the consistency that they practice with and play with the whole time. And that’s in fairness to both players, who are really good competitors and really working hard and really doing a good job. So we don’t have much more to say than that.”
Third-string quarterback Mac Jones also reportedly looked good in practice, throwing a touchdown of his own.
And less talked-about, but no less relevant, is Alabama’s running back competition; Josh Jacobs and freshman Jerome Ford both reportedly impressed during the scrimmage.
Regardless of who starts at quarterback, the Crimson Tide look locked and loaded to “Roll Tide” through the fall season en route to what Bama fans hope are back-to-back championships.
But as for who’s going to win that signal-caller battle, we’ll find out when they announce the lineups on opening night.
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