Depending on when you checked in on the Alabama quarterback race, you might believe that it’s any one of the Tide’s 3 scholarship quarterbacks who’ll win the starting job.
In early-March, new offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb compared true freshman Keelon Russell’s vision to former Heisman Trophy runner-up Michael Penix Jr. In mid-March, On3 insider Pete Nakos reported that Austin Mack had been turning heads in practice and that the former Washington transfer was “a serious contender” for the starting job in his 3rd season with Kalen DeBoer. In the first week of April, former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy said that Ty Simpson was in “firm control” of the starting job so far.
Add it all up and yeah, you’ve got some extremely optimistic things coming out about 3 guys who have a combined 0 starts at the college level. McElroy added that he didn’t think that we’d have an answer to the Jalen Milroe successor plan anytime soon, but there’s something that feels inevitable.
At least 1 of these guys, perhaps 2, will be the odd man out and hit the portal at some point before the end of 2025.
To be clear, that’s not a doomsday scenario. The best version of Alabama’s quarterback room makes that possibility imminent in this era. You could argue that was the case in 2023, too. -spring outlook of Alabama’s quarterback room couldn’t have been bleaker, which was why Nick Saban did something he had never done in the portal era. He signed a post-spring quarterback. Ultimately, Tyler Buchner wasn’t the answer, but if you had told an Alabama fan in April that the Tide quarterback room would have the No. 6 finisher in the Heisman Trophy race after leading an SEC Championship victory, anybody would’ve signed up for that.
In 2025, anybody would sign up for a repeat of Milroe’s 2023 season. Surely they’d like to avoid the lows of the Texas dud and the South Florida disaster that followed with Buchner and Simpson both failing to capitalize on a golden opportunity, but hey, that was a distant memory after the Georgia win in the SEC Championship Game. It’s ironic that by the end of the 2024 season, Milroe’s regular-season performance against UGA was a distant memory.
The question now is about what awaits, and why most paths to declaring a QB1 include justification for at least 1 of these guys transferring by the time the calendar turns to 2026.
If it’s Ty Simpson and he plays at a high level, here’s something to keep in mind
That might be considered the path of least resistance. You could argue that Simpson, who enters Year 4 in Tuscaloosa, could easily leave for the NFL Draft at season’s end and Alabama could turn to Russell and Mack to battle it out in 2026. After all, we watched Mac Jones become a first-round pick after his breakout 2020 season. Why can’t Simpson follow a similar trajectory, you ask?
Well, look at the Round 1 quarterbacks in the last decade who spent 1 season as a college starter:
2017 — Mitchell Trubisky 2019 — Kyler Murray 2019 — Dwayne Haskins 2021 — Trey Lance 2021 — Mac Jones 2023 — Anthony RichardsonWith the exception of Murray, who been the clear outlier of that group even though he’s a middle-of-the-pack NFL starter with 1 career winning season and 0 playoff victories, that’s a horrendous track record for the 1-year college starters. Simpson putting himself in those conversations would be the best-case scenario for Alabama, though it’s worth remembering that Jones waited behind guys like Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa.
Simpson not only lost the battle to Milroe, but he couldn’t seize the opportunity when the window opened back up in 2023. Again, that’s not to say he can’t become a star with high-level NFL projections, especially with the Grubb-DeBoer reunion factor working in his favor, but it would just be a bit more surprising.
OK, so you get it. A banner year from Simpson could still result in him returning for 2026, especially if this comes down to Alabama’s NIL efforts mitigating that risk in what would be his final year of eligibility.
If that happens, Mack would be entering Year 4 of college in 2026. Talk to decorated quarterback recruits about spending their first 4 years on the bench. Better yet, tell me if you can find any of them. That’s all but impossible in the portal era. Waiting 4 years on the bench makes even less sense when you consider that aforementioned importance of being a multi-year starter in college. Even if you’re progressing, that’s all but impossible if you’re waiting until Year 5 to start somewhere. Mack would be the most likely casualty in that scenario. That might sting DeBoer and Grubb more than Alabama fans after Mack was the 4-star project that followed them from Washington to Alabama.
We also couldn’t rule out the notion that Russell could bounce after his freshman season, as well. Not every 5-star quarterback is wired like Arch Manning, who waited 2 years behind an established starter in Quinn Ewers. Some are wired like Malachi Nelson, who bounced when it wasn’t imminent that he’d start at USC in Year 2. Assume that a 5-star quarterback from the state of Texas would have several more enticing offers to become a QB1 in 2026 instead of waiting on Simpson to exhaust his eligibility in Tuscaloosa.
But what if Austin Mack is the guy?
The guy who has the most familiarity in the offense cannot be dismissed as the potential starter. Period.
If that’s the case, we won’t hear about it until well into fall camp. That would be considered a gigantic roll of the dice because of how messy it could get with the elder Simpson. There’s not a portal window in August, so it’s not like he’s hopping on the first plane out of Tuscaloosa if he gets word that he’s not that guy, but Alabama fans remember the 2016 Blake Barnett situation all too well. He left the program in September after he lost the starting job to a true freshman Hurts. Times have changed with the way transferring works, but Simpson doesn’t have a redshirt available, and he’s set to use his 3rd year of eligibility in 2025 (unless he gets hurt and earns a medical redshirt).
If Mack is the guy, nothing has to be imminent with Russell. It is worth noting that while the 6-6 Mack would technically be Draft-eligible after 2025, he’ll also still have 2 more years of eligibility. If Mack locks down QB1 duties and looks like an all-conference player who returns for 2026, Russell could follow the Manning route in Year 2. That’s an ideal scenario for DeBoer and Co. Alternatively, Russell could decide that Mack’s emergence put too long of a runway ahead of him for the starting job, and he could go to the highest bidder in the portal.
What’s most daunting in the Mack QB1 scenario is that it puts Simpson’s future in immediate question. Going into a season with 2 scholarship quarterbacks who have a combined 3 college pass attempts (all 3 from Mack last year) isn’t the way that DeBoer and Grubb would draw it up.
And what if Keelon Russell goes full-2016 Jalen Hurts?
For what it’s worth, I don’t think this happens unless there’s an injury to Mack or Simpson. That’s not to say that both of them will be ahead of Russell in the pecking order. But the odds of Alabama taking a 3-man quarterback competition into the season opener and opting to go with the true freshman would be a stunning result for a coaching staff that’s still trying to prove itself in Year 2.
For entertainment’s sake, let’s play it out with Russell as QB1. Simpson and Mack would both be in the portal the second it opens after the regular season. As mentioned previously with Simpson, things can get messy for a Year 4 guy that loses the job in fall camp. That goes double if it’s someone 3 years his junior who wins the job. The optimistic projection would be that Simpson and Mack both stay engaged behind the younger signal-caller in hopes that at the very least, they up their portal value with the reps they get. Hurts did that in 2018. Granted, he already had 2 national championship berths under his belt by the time he was a backup to Tagovailoa. That obviously wouldn’t be the case for Simpson or Mack.
But if the goal is simply to have one of the SEC’s best quarterbacks in 2025, that’s a trade-off that Alabama’s staff would be willing to take on. Quarterback depth with a true freshman starter is like finding a 2-star running back that looks like the second coming of Derrick Henry. It doesn’t exist. Go ask Florida about finding guys who want to back up DJ Lagway. Shoot, even go ask Tennessee what it was like getting QB depth behind redshirt freshman Nico Iamaleava last year.
Russell emerging as a true freshman would have obvious pros and cons. It’d be interesting if that would prompt another intriguing scenario.
We could see QB portal movement as soon as the post-spring window
Don’t rule that out. Mack would be the most likely portal entry of the current group if he feels like Russell is already ahead of him, but the portal is a 2-way street. Would it be possible for DeBoer to add a post-spring quarterback? Definitely, especially if they sense that they could lose Mack. It would certainly prompt a 2023-like panic about the state of the room and why DeBoer and Grubb sought a 4th QB when they already have 2 hand-picked guys and a former 5-star signal-caller with a year in the system.
Above all else, what Alabama would like to avoid is heading into fall camp with 2 scholarship quarterbacks. The Tide will have completely messed this up if that ends up being the case.
Like McElroy suggested, my best guess is that Alabama will eventually start fall camp by giving Simpson the majority of the reps with the ones and making it a QB2 competition between Mack and Russell. If Simpson struggles out of the gates, that’s when we’ll really see the power dynamics within that room. How long is his leash? And does the backup feel like an upgrade?
Soon enough, we’ll have answers to all of those questions. For now, we’ll have to settle for bi-weekly twists in the Alabama quarterback battle.
There’ll be at least 1 odd man out of Alabama’s 3-man QB room (and maybe 2), no matter what’s being said Saturday Down South.
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