Replacing Jake Coker isn’t going to be an easy process.

Alabama held its first spring scrimmage at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday, and RB Bo Scarbrough and WR ArDarius Stewart were the stars of the day.

While hearing offensive names as standouts is surely good news for fans of the defending national champions, it also probably would’ve been nice to hear Saban rave about one quarterback standing out above the rest.

The closest we came to seeing that was a remark from Saban about David Cornwell throwing the ball “pretty well.”

That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it’s something to chew on in his battle with Blake Barnett, Cooper Bateman and Jalen Hurts to become the next Alabama starting quarterback.

Saban did answer some questions about the position after what he classified as a windy day that presumably kept them from doing some of the things that he would’ve liked to have seen in the passing game.

Alabama beat writer Michael Casagrande transcribed a few of Saban’s quarterback comments:

“I think the big thing they need to is, each and every one of them can’t be thinking about where I am on the depth chart, what my position is and worry about that,” Saban said. “They need to worry about what they need to do to be better so they can play winning football at the position and do the things that they need to do to become a really good quarterback. I think they’ve done a pretty good job of that so far.”

One could say that Saban’s encouragement to ignore the depth chart is good news for a healthy and fair competition, but a cynic could interpret that statement to mean that there has yet to be a performance worthy of receiving designation as choice at the top of the depth chart.

Saban said that the Crimson Tide mixed and matched quarterbacks throughout the scrimmage in hopes of finding a pecking order for the remainder of the spring.

“I think two things have to happen,” Saban said. “I think a guy has to win his teammates over but I think you’ve also got to be put a guy in position to be able to do that. We rotated a lot of guys around today. We’re trying to give everybody a chance right now. We’ll evaluate how they did on film and divvy up the reps for next week.”

It will be interesting to find out how the reps are allotted in the coming days now that there is some scrimmage film on the record for this group.