It may be time to go back and start re-evaluating three star recruits, looking a little harder at their potential, and start coaching three stars into five stars, aka Demeco Ryans to keep players in the program longer. If there are four stars not getting picked up in the transfer portal then that means three stars are even less in demand.
Here's the major flaw I see in expecting to consistently benefit from the transfer portal. There is a "thing" called team chemistry, it is the "humanness" of the sport that is as real as the oxygen in the air. I've been a part of teams and coached teams with talent all over the roster (baseball) yet won more with less talented teams and lost fewer games with less talented teams, because of continuity among the group that only comes with keeping the same core group of players together building something where the sum of the parts is much greater than the individual parts.
My fear for Alabama is this constant turnover of players going in and players going out is going to eat away at one of the foundational pillars of having a good team. Yes, all programs are going to have to deal with it, but Alabama has the furthest perch to fall from so we will see the greatest impact of it.
