Alabama QB competition article
- Thread starter Redwood Forrest
- Start date
Mississippi State last season. Jalen was our hero in that one in the end.
If he loses the competition, sure. So would Tua.
Surely we've all known this for a long while now.
I'm rather baffled. Averion only said what we all already knew. If Jalen doesn't win it's highly likely he goes somewhere else to play QB.
Same probably goes for Tua.
I know he sort of spoke out of turn but no new information was actually revealed...at least no info that reveals where things actually stand with the competition.
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Would Alabama had lost if Jalen was not the QB, though? That’s what Selma is asking.
I would say Alabama still wins the State game.
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Wooo!!To be the man, you've got to beat the man......
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Hard to say where Tua was in his development at that point in the season.
But I tend to think we wouldn’t have been up against the wall at the end, because MSU wouldn’t have been able to put nine men up, and the whole offense would have performed better.
All credit to Jalen for the late drive and final pass. But the soft spots in his game put us in that position in the first place.
Completely agree.
There’s no telling how it would have gone with another QB, but State’s defense was completely focused on Jalen’s weaknesses.
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Averion might not have said anything we didn’t already know but I think Saban did, my own interpretation from listening to Saban’s last press conference before A day. To me it wasn’t what he said about Jalen but rather what he didn’t say about Jalen an what he did say about Tua. Just my opinion TIFWIW...
If you are referring to what Saban had to say about Jalen and the meeting he had with Jalen's father then I indeed think he said a lot. I don't know if Saban has 100% made his mind up on the QB situation but I certainly have a strong feeling about the direction he's leaning. When a coach has a lot of nice things to say about a player and his parents but then adds the statement "But I think at the end of the day everybody has career decisions that they'll have to make" it sounds to me that Saban is trying to make sure that if he names Tua the starter and Jalen leaves that there are no bad feelings on either side. I certainly will have no bad feelings toward Jalen if he leaves. I wish him well whatever happens.
I don't see how that can be laid at CNS's feet. First of all Bama's had some good place-kickers: Tiffin, Shelley, Griffith. Even Foster was 10-12 prior to the AU game, and prior to UGA, Pappanastos was 13-14 inside of 40 and 17-22 inside of 50, he also hit 2 important kicks in the UGA game. Who could anticipate their meltdowns at crunch time? CNS is definitely flawed, as no one is close to perfect, but IMO, the pk performance has been decent overall and the failures have been difficult to forecast. Idk, but CNS has probably given as many scholarships to kickers as anyone. Any Bama failure is hyper-magnified.
I think the odds of CNS doing the best thing for the program is as close to 100% as any coach has ever been - whatever that % really is. He hasn't made too many mistakes. And he has done a very good job at selecting QBs, in some cases picking long shots, including a 5th yr Sr. who few even dreamed would play, over a hot shot transfer that some were giving odds on winning the Heisman, and choosing a barely 18 y/o true freshman over several upper classmen. And inserting another true fr over a 26-2 QB at the half time of the NC game. And they all worked out.
Agree. I think people who are worried that Saban doesn't really know the difference between the two are worriying unnecessarily. First, after the game itself, he said that Bama needed a spark and needed to pass the ball to move it - thus Tua is mentioned by name. He had said that they were considering inserting him in the Clemson game if necessary. He knew. IMO, it was not a near mutiny that moved CNS to insert Tua, he was already considering it. IMO, CNS is not as risk averse as some think, especially when he senses danger. Barring injury, or the effects of the one Tua's already has, there is almost no chance that Tua is not the starter - and for many reasons. 1: recruiting has already been hurt, 2: the O will need to be more successful since the D will likely not be the force it has been in the past. I have more confidence in the secondary than NT - the middle could be a real issue. And that's a problem that is hard to fix or work around. It could distort the entire D.
A-Day usually tells us almost nothing. In fact, it usually misleads. Everyone knows all of the reasons, but some will fall for it again :smile:.
I agree. I'm much more worried about the middle of the d-line than I am about QB. I still think Saban will always play the guys that he thinks gives us the best chance to win, which is why it is always funny to me that people question who he plays. I also doubt very seriously that he worries about "mutiny" among the players. He's the head coach; they are the players. Yes, he gives them a voice just like he gives his coaches a voice, but, in the end, he makes the decisions that he thinks are best. If guys decide to leave because of that, so be it. We can with them or without them.
I believe that CNS knew long before now that he would be at this decision point. I think that time was in 2016 sometime in the second half of the season.
Had it not been for the ridiculous number of turnover TDs converted by the defense we would not have been in the NC last year. Despite how it ultimately ended. He set out recruiting Tua then as he always does searching for the best player at the position that he can sign. Knowing we had limitations with Jalen that he could defend and it was only a matter of time before other teams figured out how to defend him which they did in 2017.
The fact that Tua played at all last year tells you all you need to know about his ability where it is generally best to limit distractions at the QB position. Tua was getting more than mop up duty snaps. CNS was already sending the message to Hurts and the rest of the team.
The 2016 NC game against Clemson had an eerily familiar feel to it similar to the UGA game this year - no consistency on offense despite Hurts breaking a go ahead run last year. Had coach had a formidable backup QB option in 2016 NC I'm sure he would have tried him then. But he didn't have that option.
If you are coach, you caught lightening in a bottle winning the NC in that fashion last year. He has a whole new staff and recruiting momentum building. Imo, You can't waste all that energy to go back and do what you were doing.
Our schedule this year looks to be a really weak one. However our defense will be as green as ever. We could probably win 10 games easily with Jalen at QB but they would be won with significantly less offensive diversity which we have already confirmed was affecting recruiting. And if we were to face UGA again in the SEC championship I think we would largely be in the same position needing QB that can use all the offensive weapons and test all parts of the field.
It just seems Tua is the better option from a lot of different angles.
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Had it not been for the ridiculous number of turnover TDs converted by the defense we would not have been in the NC last year. Despite how it ultimately ended. He set out recruiting Tua then as he always does searching for the best player at the position that he can sign. Knowing we had limitations with Jalen that he could defend and it was only a matter of time before other teams figured out how to defend him which they did in 2017.
The fact that Tua played at all last year tells you all you need to know about his ability where it is generally best to limit distractions at the QB position. Tua was getting more than mop up duty snaps. CNS was already sending the message to Hurts and the rest of the team.
The 2016 NC game against Clemson had an eerily familiar feel to it similar to the UGA game this year - no consistency on offense despite Hurts breaking a go ahead run last year. Had coach had a formidable backup QB option in 2016 NC I'm sure he would have tried him then. But he didn't have that option.
If you are coach, you caught lightening in a bottle winning the NC in that fashion last year. He has a whole new staff and recruiting momentum building. Imo, You can't waste all that energy to go back and do what you were doing.
Our schedule this year looks to be a really weak one. However our defense will be as green as ever. We could probably win 10 games easily with Jalen at QB but they would be won with significantly less offensive diversity which we have already confirmed was affecting recruiting. And if we were to face UGA again in the SEC championship I think we would largely be in the same position needing QB that can use all the offensive weapons and test all parts of the field.
It just seems Tua is the better option from a lot of different angles.
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I agree with the gist of this thread that Tua will ultimately win the job, but I disagree on this point.
We can if/coulda/woulda with every game Alabama has ever played. But on a night when State ran down the clock, our defense rarely stopped them, we played from behind the entire game and there was added pressure on every possession, Jalen made one big play after another.
So, no, I don’t think we can say we win without him, even if we might have.
We can if/coulda/woulda with every game Alabama has ever played. But on a night when State ran down the clock, our defense rarely stopped them, we played from behind the entire game and there was added pressure on every possession, Jalen made one big play after another.
So, no, I don’t think we can say we win without him, even if we might have.
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Yeah, I do not really want to play that hypothetical game at such a microlevel. I think the staff should've started giving him legit snaps earlier in the season so maybe we could've gotten that 15-0 SEC & CFP champ season but it is in the past now. I wouldn't trade the unknown of how that would turn out for the known of a 13-1 CFP champ season. All we know about Tua is that he looked good in garbage time in the regular season and had one good half in the CFP championship where his entry caught a great opponent off guard. I happen to think all that does equate to Tua being the starter but people are almost going the way of revisionist history w/r/t Hurts' accomplishments.
I hope we aren't relegated to measuring the starting qb by how he played against Mississippi State after struggling more often than not vs good defenses.
Oh but yeah. He'll play well in the spring game like last year.
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I don't think the review of Jalen's first two years and his epic struggles to learn the passing game and execute it against better teams and concluding he's not gotten better is revisionist history.
I've got too many memories of Hurts dropping back, bailing the pocket, scrambling out to the right and either throwing it away in the 5th row of seats or just casually running out of bounds to know this is the real truth. There are too many replays of Hurts apparently seeing an open man and not pulling the trigger to get him the ball OR an open man that was probably a 2nd or 3rd read being wide open and Jalen failing to see him.
The only reason Jalen Hurts ever played those games is because of his amazing running abilities. But when teams eventually learned the best way to play him, he became a liability.
Can't dispute that but Hurts quite frankly had a pretty strong November when by the Tennessee game he was starting to lose my confidence. He had a good LSU game hurt by WRs dropping balls...made several drive-extending 3rd down conversions on his feet and played a very clean game in one where injuries made it necessary for the offense to not make mistakes and horde possession whenever possible. His MSU performance was probably his best all-around play as a quarterback here. The Auburn game was a full-team meltdown pure and simple. You can't blame Hurts for soft plays after the catch nor solely put miscommunication on offense on his shoulders. That is how Hurts ended the season...2 good to great games and 1 bad game when everyone around him and calling plays for him was having a bad game.
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