There are few college coaches that will have the luxury of two outstanding quarterbacks going into spring football. Fortunately for the defending national champions, Nick Saban is one of those coaches.

How Saban and his offensive staff, led by the team’s new full-time offensive coordinator Mike Locksley, handle the upcoming quarterback competition will be one of the biggest storylines this offseason in the SEC.

During a recent appearance on WJOX 94.5 FM radio program The Roundtable, former Auburn coach and current SEC Network analyst Gene Chizik was asked to share his thoughts on Alabama’s offseason decision between rising junior Jalen Hurts and rising sophomore Tua Tagovailoa.

“Right now, (the coaches) are so focused on recruiting — it really is a backburner item; but after this weekend, it won’t be,” Chizik said on the air. “They’ll be back on campus, and they’ll have to deal with the reality of a great problem that everybody wishes they had. You got a guy that’s won 20-some odd games and lost two. Then you got another guy that came in and became the hero in a game that mattered probably as much as any game since Nick’s been there.

While many are going to be eager to cast Tua Tagovailoa as the obvious selection, Chizik warns against listening to the outside critics.

“So, it’s a good problem to have but you know, people are going to speculate,” the SEC Network host continued. “Nobody knows anything and I will say this very direct — everyone is going to have an opinion but unless you are in that building and you see every day what each of those guys bring to the table, you don’t know.”

Chizik then went on to use the National Championship Game against Georgia as an example. While Saban’s decision to go to the true freshman Tagovailoa seemed bold to many, Chizik believes you can’t really make that statement without knowing all the facts leading up to the game.

“The question everyone asks is ‘What do you think of the change at halftime that Nick made?’ Well, if there’s anyone that’s qualified to make that decision, it’s him — and it was a great decision. But we don’t know what practice looked like for 30-some odd days before they made that move. Everyone thinks what a bold move. Well, it wasn’t that bold of a move if in practice you saw Tua — they chart everything — if he’s completing 90 percent of his passes in 7-on-7, if he’s going into team scenarios and he’s really efficient with the football and he knows where he’s going with the football. They had time to evaluate all those things.

“We can all speculate from the outside but unless you are on the inside watching every day… You don’t know those things.”