Injuries are never good. Let’s make that perfectly clear.

Injuries can, however, be blessings in disguise. Those are two different things.

It wasn’t good, but it was a blessing in disguise that Jacob Eason went down in Georgia’s 2017 opener and Jake Fromm took over. An injury to the starting quarterback is enough to derail a season (sup, Florida State?). No coach wants to see a potential starting quarterback suffer so much as a hangnail.

But something tells me that Nick Saban isn’t losing any sleep over the way his quarterback battle unfolded this spring. Instead of a constant evaluation of Tua Tagovailoa vs. Jalen Hurts, it wound up just being the latter who was healthy enough to get full reps.

Tagovailoa’s hand injury to open camp and recent setback prevented him from having a normal spring. Obviously it would have been better had the sophomore-to-be had a healthy spring. Instead, it’s looking like he won’t even see any action for Alabama’s spring game Saturday.

Yes, that has potential to be a blessing in disguise.

Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Saban was faced with an extremely difficult task this spring, and really this entire offseason. He knows his quarterback room is thin, to say the least. Without the aid of a graduate transfer or incoming freshman signal-caller, the margin for error was slim.

The idea of Hurts changing positions did and still does seem very real. My guess is that he’d rather switch to receiver than hold a clipboard for the next 2 years. My other guess is that Saban would rather Hurts hold a clipboard than switch to receiver in 2018.

Neither will happen if Tagovailoa is banged up. If there’s any question about Tagovailoa’s health, Saban doesn’t even have to sell Hurts on why he should stick at quarterback. Of course Hurts would stick with the position that made him the SEC Offensive Player of the Year as a true freshman in 2016.

Even if Tagovailoa were perfectly healthy throughout the spring, the expectation was that Saban wasn’t going to name a starter until fall camp. He could talk about how even the battle was and flirt with the idea of running a 2-quarterback system that would make everyone happy. That could still be the plan in fall camp if and when Tagovailoa’s hand is healed.

Saban got to avoid the constant questions about “which guy looked better today.” He’ll also get to avoid people overanalyzing Hurts and Tagovailoa’s spring game performance (Saban loves comparison questions like he loves a pair of ripped jeans).

Saban doesn’t have to show his hand anytime soon. Would he have had to show it if Tagovailoa’s hand was 100 percent? Probably not, but there would have been more cards on the table after the spring game.

What if Tagovailoa threw for 4 touchdown passes and Hurts was completely one-dimensional? That wouldn’t have been an easy post-spring game sell for Saban to the media and perhaps more important, to Hurts.

I’m sold on the belief that Saban legitimately doesn’t have his mind made up on how to handle this. It’s trickier than a typical quarterback battle. We know that. Saban knows that.

He has depth to worry about, and if he plays his cards right, he can have a quarterback room with two elite players who are fully on board. Or he can mess this up and suddenly an injury is the only thing standing in the way of Alabama’s title chances hinging on redshirt freshman-to-be Mac Jones.

Who knows? Maybe Jones will ball out in Tagovailoa’s place on Saturday and suddenly, Alabama fans will breathe a sigh of relief knowing that their team’s quarterback depth is deeper than we thought. What a blessing in disguise that would be for Jones and Saban. Tagovailoa’s injury could yield a silver lining as soon as Saturday.

Did this spring go the way that Saban drew it up? Of course not. In his perfect scenario, he’d have 3-4 healthy scholarship quarterbacks getting ready for the spring game.

But you know what else didn’t go the way Saban drew it up? The national championship. That ended up working out just fine.

Something tells me this will, too.