To be certain, there are more important people in the state of Alabama than the quarterback of the Alabama football team. There have to be.

At times it can be tough to think of any, though. College football fans, particularly in the SEC, have a peculiar relationship with the quarterbacks. We call them by their first names, worry about their mental state and all of us spend way too much time wondering if they’re ready for the pressures that come with their new job*.

* – 100% percent true story: My wife’s uncle, who is a doctor in Illinois and has never lived in Alabama and attended exactly two UA football games in person, became a fan of the team because of our ties to the university. Literally every conversation we have begins and ends with a discussion related to the Alabama quarterback. The man called me to ask about the health of our infant daughter last fall, then immediately swerved and asked, “When is Coker gonna stop overthrowing the damn receivers?!”

So, it’s best we get to know the candidates for the 2016 job as best we can. For purposes of this piece we’re going to set aside Cooper Bateman, if only because it’s difficult to think of anything to write about him that hasn’t already been written.

Blake Barnett (Redshirt Fr., 6-5, 200): A person who knows things swore to me on A-Day last spring that Barnett had impressed the coaching staff as much as anyone in his first spring practice and to keep an eye out for him once fall got here. Of course, the former 5-star was barely heard from aside from the staff’s decision to redshirt him, along with an October story that he was briefly hospitalized with an illness. Barnett did turn a number of heads as the scout team leader — in January, no less than Reggie Ragland said Barnett “is going to be a monster” — and is likely to emerge from practice, at the very least, as the 2nd-string quarterback.

And really, the question for Lane Kiffin and Nick Saban may be what they expect out of 2016. At Alabama the expectation every season is to win a national championship — particularly in recent years — so going with a redshirt freshman may not be the best route to getting there. If the goal is to build for the future? Maybe.

David Cornwell (Soph., 6-5 221): So here’s your wild card for the QB race in 2016. Cornwell finished as the 2nd-team QB in the spring of 2015, and he was considered a serious candidate for the job when camp opened in 2015. He struggled once camp opened, however, and actually finished lower on the depth chart than even Alec Morris*. Stay tuned.

* – Morris, a rising senior, officially transferred to North Texas after the national title game.

Jalen Hurts (Fr., 6-2 208): Worth mentioning only because he’s already on campus, after graduating early to enroll in January (and getting to impersonate Clemson’s Deshaun Watson as Alabama prepared for the national championship game). Conventional wisdom says he is almost certain to redshirt in 2016, barring something truly unforeseen. Alabama isn’t known for dual-threat quarterbacks, and it will be interesting to see how he fits in Kiffn’s offense in the future.