Alabama fans and the quarterback position, just makes for such a ridiculous speculation and what not.
I mean last pre-season it was a steady stream of why Blake Sims wasn't the guy (I even saw one poster declare Alabama couldn't win more than 8 games with Blake) and how awesome Coker was. Once people started figure out may be Coker still had room for improvement, that seemed to shift to just steadily bashing Blake's abilities and may be some Bateman (and even Cornwell) talk throw in for good measure.
Now though? As soon as people saw something good about Cornwell, even if it was just a sentence or two, they hung on that and we saw page after page of how Cornwell was the guy. Until you know, someone pointed out may be Cornwell isn't, and now it's on to Blake Barnett. The funny thing is I can't even keep up.
I found myself going from saying I expected Coker to start (prior to his arriving on campus), to just outright defending Blake as people completely disparaged his abilities. This pre-season, when people shifted to anointing Cornwell and not thinking as much of Coker, I found myself defending Coker and reminding people that if upside was in fact the primary concern, it was Barnett not Cornwell that had the most upside.
Just calm down though... Yes, Barnett has the most potential, but he's also the youngest and most inexperienced candidate. He needs to develop mentally and physically, I don't think it would be a good thing at all if he started this year, it would likely be a bad sign. How many true freshman quarterbacks can you name that started and did a great job? Cornwell? He's probably not quite ready either, yes he has talent, but as people have drifted back to reality with him, he's just probably not ready to take that reigns and that's just as well, he and Barnett can have a QB battle next season.
As far as Coker, no, he's not perfect. But, he was the backup on not one, but two different championship contending teams at two different schools. Being second string is earned, and the fact that he apparently got narrowly beaten out by two guys who went on to have great seasons doesn't say a whole lot of bad things about him. He's still a guy with NFL potential, and while he has weaknesses the odds are he can step in and have a good season for Alabama. The fact that he hasn't been named the starter yet probably has as much to do with keeping Cornwell and Barnett engaged as anything else.