The Bryce Young Story at Alabama never had to be perfect to be legendary.

It never was quite perfect, as a matter of fact.

There was the national championship Bama won in 2020 with Young standing on the sidelines and watching while Mac Jones got all the glory.

There was his historic Heisman Trophy season in 2021 with the bitter national championship game loss, to a conference rival no less, at the end.

And there was the season that just ended, his final one in crimson and white, with the sprained throwing shoulder in Week 5, the draining, rigorous rehab and the 2 crushing road losses that kept Young from Atlanta, never mind another shot at that elusive national title as a starter.

So, yeah, Young’s time in Tuscaloosa was less like a story and more like a saga — not a saga to bemoan though, but rather one Crimson Tide football fans should feel blessed to talk about for as long as they scream, “Roll Tide.”

Let’s start at the finish.

Let’s go back to last Saturday afternoon at the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, when Nick Saban felt Young esteemed enough in Alabama football history to bring him back on the field 1 more time, simply to hand the ball off 1 more time. All of this so Young could shake hands 1 more time with his offensive teammates and drift off the field 1 more time as a collegiate, so he could wave to the adoring crowd 1 more time while wearing a Crimson Tide uniform.

No, Young’s incredible career at Alabama wasn’t the stuff of storybooks, not in the quintessential sense at least. But it sure did have a storybook ending, with No. 9 slinging 5 touchdown passes to 5 different receivers, all without an interception, and throwing just 1 more incompletion (6) than he had TD strikes against a really good Kansas State defense in a 45-20 victory. He began the day very slowly, including an underthrow so unlike him, and 3 hours or so later ended it on the fast track to the victory podium and a Sugar Bowl trophy celebration that was admittedly bittersweet.

You see, that Sugar Bowl trophy was well and good, even great, but when Young came back to Alabama for the 2022 season after his record-setting 2021 Heisman campaign, only 1 box was still left unchecked in his personal Tide to-do list. We all know what that box was, and it wasn’t the Sugar Bowl trophy. It was that piece of hardware that either Georgia or TCU is going to raise next Monday night in Los Angeles, with the confetti and all.

All of this is the essence of Bryce Young’s existence at Alabama. That even amid the most glorious moments, there was that tinge of what might have been.

Almost always, this wasn’t his fault.

In Young’s surreal, swan song of a 2022 season, in those 2 agonizing losses at Tennessee and at LSU, Young passed for a combined 783 yards, with 3 touchdown passes and only 1 interception. And the Crimson Tide offense he directed in those defeats put up a combined 73 points, with 1 of the touchdowns against the Volunteers being scored by the defense.

In other words, Young wasn’t the reason Alabama didn’t win the national championship or even the SEC or even the SEC West in 2022. Moreover, without him, the Crimson Tide might’ve been headed for something like an 8-5 or 9-4 season instead of the 11-2 record they achieved.

In other words, Young was often Bama’s bailout this past fall, the guy offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien looked toward to make things right when everything was about to fall apart.

In 2022, in the 12 games he played in, Young threw for 3,328 yards, completed just under 65% of his passes, tossed 32 touchdown passes and was intercepted only 5 times. He added 4 TDs on the ground.

Simply put, Young did everything in his power, including returning 2 weeks later from a sprained throwing shoulder like some sort of Superman in shoulder pads, to will the Crimson Tide back to their usual place in the College Football Playoff.

But he couldn’t be everywhere on the field.

He couldn’t make up for a defense in those 2 losses that allowed a combined 84 points, including a winning field goal in Knoxville, and a winning touchdown and 2-point conversion in Baton Rouge, both on the final play, while Young stood helplessly on the sideline, with his helmet in his hand and his heart almost certainly breaking.

Those 2 days, especially the early November night at Death Valley, are when Bryce Young’s dreams of leading Alabama to a national championship died. He wouldn’t get back to Atlanta to defend that SEC championship from 2021, when he conquered Georgia, and he wouldn’t get back to the College Football Playoff to avenge that nightmare of a national title game loss, when Young wasn’t his typical excellent self and succumbed to Georgia.

There was always something during Young’s 2-year run of brilliance in Tuscaloosa.

There was always something or somethings, whether forced or unforced, mixing all of Young’s excellence with that twist of imperfection.

Because Young never had The Moment at Alabama, but he had an endless amount of breathtaking flashpoints that, put together, probably added up to more than 1 of those Perfect Moments. In a weird way, the imperfections that always followed Young during his Alabama career probably will make him more treasured and beloved than if things had always gone perfectly for him.

The 6-foot, 194-pounder from Pasadena, California, who arrived in Tuscaloosa in 2020 and is now gone like a shooting star with Monday’s official declaration for the NFL Draft will always be recalled by Crimson Tide faithful as a champion, even if in very small print in his Bama bio it’ll forever say he didn’t win a championship as a starter.

No matter.

His roughly 1-yard-high stack of accomplishments in that same biography will speak louder than any piece of metal ever could.

Like the very last one he added to his long list last Saturday in that Sugar Bowl victory, when Young moved into 2nd place on Alabama’s all-time list in career touchdown passes. He did that with his 78th career scoring toss, and he ended his day and his career with a cool, even 80 touchdown passes. The only quarterback in front of him now on that prestigious list of Crimson Tide signal-callers is Tua Tagovailoa, who finished with 87.

Tagovailoa was another legendary Alabama quarterback at 1 of the positions that’s been an embarrassment of riches in Tuscaloosa for decades. He was a left-handed football magician in the same way that Young was a right-handed football wizard, and Tua did help the Tide win that national title in 2017 when he entered for an ineffective Jalen Hurts and put Bama over the top in overtime against … Georgia, the same SEC rival that Young couldn’t quite take out 4 years later in the same for-all-the-marbles spot.

Knowing all this, can you still honestly, definitively say that Tagovailoa had a better run in Tuscaloosa than Young? Tua did win the Walter Camp and the Maxwell, but he didn’t snag a Heisman Trophy like Young did. It’s a really good debate, about who was more electrifying, more meaningful, more memorable, and that fact alone tells you how much Young accomplished at Alabama without winning a title as a starter.

The truth is, Tua didn’t either. Hurts was the starter during the 2017 season, not Tua. So, when you think about it a little deeper, Tagovailoa and Young are really on the same playing field. Every loyal Bama fan who watched Young star in crimson and white for 2 seasons knows he could’ve done what Tua did at the end of the 2020 national championship game had, say, Jones faltered as Hurts did and Young was forced into duty in crunch time.

But Jones didn’t falter. He threw for 464 yards and 5 touchdowns, and the only whiff of the field that Young saw that night in the blowout of Ohio State came in garbage time, not winning time. Young entered for the final play of the game, with about 15 seconds left, and he calmly took a knee. The game was over, the Tide players were celebrating, and the confetti was falling, but the triumphant stage wasn’t his. It was someone else’s.

So, Young didn’t get his championship moment like Tua did. It just never materialized, because that’s football and that’s life.

And that was the story of Young’s brilliant yet imperfect career at Alabama.

Now, what about the guy who Young passed for 2nd on the all-time Tide TD list? That would be AJ McCarron, who threw 77 career touchdown passes back in the early years of the Saban Era. McCarron was stylistically different from Young in every way. He was a traditional, drop back passer who only ran when absolutely necessary. He wowed with steadiness and precision, not with sizzle and pizzazz like Young.

McCarron was also different from Young because he won a national championship as a starting quarterback. Even more, he won 2 of them, leading the Tide to back-to-back titles in 2011 and 2012. McCarron was magical, absolutely. But everything also came together for him and those Bama teams during those 2 seasons the way it never did for Young and the past 2 Bama teams.

In 2011 and 2012, there was never anything missing. In 2021 and 2022, there was always something missing. But poll 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 Alabama fans about who they would rank higher on their all-time list of Tide quarterbacks, and I would bet that it would be darn close, and recency bias might even tip the scales Young’s way.

You see the point here?

When McCarron left Alabama after the 2013 season, he was projected by most draft experts and scouts to go in the 2nd or 3rd round. When the draft came around, McCarron wasn’t taken until the 5th round by the Cincinnati Bengals. This doesn’t lessen his illustrious career at Alabama one bit, but just consider that Young could very well be the No. 1 overall pick of this year’s draft and the reality hits of how talented and dynamic the quarterback who just said goodbye to Tuscaloosa is.

Tua. Bryce. AJ.

Each is a curious, wonderful case study in quarterback play at Alabama during the Saban Era, and we haven’t even mentioned Greg McElroy, who quarterbacked Saban’s 1st national title team at Bama in 2009, or Blake Sims, the dual-threat dynamo who put on a show at Alabama in 2014 but like Young fell short of a championship as a starter.

But we should also mention Jake Coker, who lost out to Sims in the competition for the starting quarterback job in 2014 but came back in 2015 and won the job. All Coker did that fall was quarterback the Tide to Saban’s 4th national title at Bama, capped by a thrilling 45-40 victory over Clemson in the championship game. Coker was rock steady and good enough in the big moments that season, but some might remember that Coker was also fortunate to lead an offense with stars like wide receiver Calvin Ridley, tight end OJ Howard and, of course, a human wrecking ball like running back Derrick Henry, who broke Herschel Walker’s single-season SEC rushing record and won the Heisman Trophy.

Coker was really good that year, throwing for over 3,000 yards, but he was also in the right place at just the right time, especially with a wingman like Henry, who rushed for over 2,000 yards. Coker went undrafted in 2016 and had a cup of coffee in the NFL that year with the Arizona Cardinals. He was good enough for that 1 wonderful season, and he’ll never have to pay for a drink in Tuscaloosa.

But Coker will never be confused with Young in Alabama football history, even though Coker will always be the one who won a national championship as a starting quarterback.

There you see that embarrassment of riches we were talking about when it comes to quarterbacks and the Crimson Tide.

And this is just during the glorious Saban Era, or roughly the past 15 years.

What about Alabama’s star quarterbacks of yesteryear?

What about that quarterback named Joe Namath?

Or Harry Gilmer?

Or Pat Trammell?

Or Ken Stabler?

Or Jeff Rutledge?

Or even someone like Jay Barker?

All of them, the more recent ones and the older ones you have to google to find more about, were and are special in their own unique way.

So was Bryce Young.

He is heading to the NFL Draft, and he just might be the very 1st name announced. Regardless, he will make whichever team selects him very lucky to have him.

Alabama was lucky to have him, for 3 seasons total and 2 seasons as a starter.

And, yeah, his story never was quite ideal.

But, just maybe, that will only increase his legend as the years and decades pass.

Think of the Heisman year. Think of the rehab from that bum shoulder.

Yes, also think of the heartbreaking losses, in the 2021 and 2022 seasons.

It’s all a part of Bryce Young’s Alabama package.

And it was an astonishing thrill ride nobody wanted to see end.

It was imperfect and legendary.