Were you one of the millions – and millions – of people watching Alabama-South Florida last week and saying, “What the _____ is going on here?” (See what I did there, with the ‘millions and millions?’ The Rock Promo Raw 11/15/99 – YouTube)
If you haven’t figured it out yet, Alabama seems to have a quarterback problem. That doesn’t mean that the Crimson Tide won’t figure it out.
Head coach Nick Saban on Saturday, after the game, told the world that there would be a re-evaluation at the position, and then on Monday, in his regular weekly press conference in Tuscaloosa, Saban made the announcement that Jalen Milroe, who started the first two games for Alabama this season (Middle Tennessee and Texas), would start this Saturday against Ole Miss (Jalen Milroe is Alabama’s quarterback moving forward, according to coach Nick Saban – YouTube / Channel 13, WVTM, Birmingham).
That game has the 2:30 p.m. slot on CBS, and is at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa.
ESPN staff writer Alex Scarborough has tried to assess the issue here (Nick Saban and Alabama football have a quarterback problem – ESPN), and Scarborough, one of the best writers regularly on espn.com, appeared on “The Paul Finebaum Show” on the SEC Network on Wednesday afternoon to talk about that issue, and more.
Scarborough touched on the rumor in the offseason that North Carolina quarterback Drake May was going to transfer to Alabama, which, of course, didn’t happen.
“How they went from Drake to Jalen, and it’s no knock on Jalen, but you’re going from a quarterback in Drake May, who has a chance to be a top pick in the draft, to a guy in Jalen Milroe who’s – he’s got some work to do in terms of being a passer,” Scarborough said.
“I think that’s really the question. Why wasn’t Ty Simpson developed a little bit more? I know they really liked him last season. I talked to people around the program, there was a lot of optimism. Where was the disconnect there? And again, you go to the portal. Why didn’t they know before spring practice that we needed to make a move there? Why did they wait until they saw everything they needed to see from Jalen Milroe and Ty Simpson, which wasn’t enough, and then they decided ‘we need to go get somebody.’ But at that point, it was too late, and end up with somebody like Ty Buchner, who is a serviceable quarterback, but I don’t think they ever thought that he was going to take the job away from those two. Drake May would have certainly helped them, but that ship sailed quite a while ago.”
Milroe didn’t play last week after going 27-of-45 for 449 yards, five touchdowns and two interceptions in the first two games. Against Texas, though, he was 14-of-27 for 255 yards, two touchdowns and two picks. Milroe, from Katy, Texas, is a big kid – he’s 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds. His strength does seem to be running the ball, although he seems to have a strong arm, just not nearly as accurate as his predecessor, Bryce Young (who is?).
Milroe had 48 yards rushing and two scores against Middle Tennessee, and 44 yards against Texas.
But after his shaky (and the offensive line’s shaky?) performance in the loss to the Longhorns, the coaching staff elected to see what they had with Tyler Buchner and Ty Simpson. Buchner, of course, came to the Tide from Notre Dame through the transfer portal, and Simpson is the true freshman.
By the half of Alabama-USF, Tide fans were ready to launch Buchner back through the transfer portal, or any other portal, for that matter, and to see if Ty Simpson had been replaced by a fan and was still in the locker room, maybe bound and gagged.
Buchner went 5-of-14 for 34 yards over the course of five drives, ending in five punts. Simpson had a little more success, going 5-of-9 for 73 yards and scoring a touchdown, but at no time would anything Alabama did offensively at USF be described as “smooth.”
It was that ugly.
And what of Alabama offensive coordinator Tommy Rees, also formerly of Notre Dame? Good hire, bad hire, too early to tell?
Finebaum reminded Scarborough that, inside the coaching world, Rees was considered at best the fourth choice – why did Saban have so much difficulty getting an offensive coordinator?
“I think you have to start with the obvious thing, which is Nick is not always the easiest person in the world to work with,” he said. “If you take that out of the equation, look at the last X number of offensive coordinators who have come through Alabama and where they went after that. It is a launching pad for success, if that’s what you want to deal with, and I think it’s just a matter of finding somebody who wanted to deal with it. Maybe we’re not giving these coordinators enough credit. Maybe they saw the writing on the wall that we didn’t – that maybe the offense wasn’t in that great of shape, and that with Bryce leaving, things were going to drop off.
“I think it’s hard in any search, right? And you have to wonder how many guys were saying ‘no’ to Nick vs. how many guys were they lukewarm on. It’s hard to get at those things in some of these searches, because it is a matter of clicking. Nick likes Tommy. He would have never have hired him if he didn’t get him in a room and liked what he was hearing, because Tommy does, in a sense, want to give Nick what he’s wanted for a while, which is balance. I mean, that was the promise heading into this season, was ‘we’ve got a guy now at offensive coordinator who’s committed to running the football.’ You talk to people, and they say, “Tommy’s a guy who’ll run the football, even if it’s not working.”
“And that’s music to Nick Saban’s ears. But there’s a problem: you have to be balanced. You have to have enough threat in the passing game to compliment the running game, and vice versa, and you’ve gotta be consistent in your approach, and through three games, that really hasn’t happened. Maybe the Middle Tennessee game, there was some of that there, but the inconsistency in establishing this is the identity of the offense, as much as Nick likes Tommy, it has not worked out to this point. There’s still a long way to go. But we may be asking in a couple of months, ‘how is it that this guy ended up as the coordinator?’ because, at a certain point, you go, well, you got Notre Dame’s coordinator and Notre Dame’s back-up quarterback, and oh, by the way, Notre Dame is doing really well. What the heck happened here?
Finebaum’s show, for the few of you who haven’t tried it, should be must-viewing for college football fans – it is NOT just SEC talk, although there is tons of that. It is truly a college football-loving atmosphere with regular guests that are some of the best journalists out there, coaches, and then there’s the comedic aspect of Finebaum interacting with the fans, that sometimes turns poignant, believe it or not.
Finebaum’s show (The Paul Finebaum Show (secsports.com)) can be seen weekdays on the SEC Network, normally for four hours, beginning at 2 p.m. Central Time.
