3 reasons to be excited, 3 reasons to be concerned about Alabama in the aftermath of A-Day
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Never has a season that included a trip to the final 8 of college football ended with so many questions and so much angst.
Welcome to the wide world of Alabama football, where the highest of expectations and standards often cloud achievement. Yes, Kalen DeBoer got himself and his program off the mat last season after a forgettable Year 1, guiding the Crimson Tide to an SEC Championship Game appearance and a place in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals.
Nobody can deny any of that. But nobody with a right mind and a realistic view can deny that Alabama’s success during the 2025 season came with plenty of caveats. All of them were exploited inside the Rose Bowl by eventual national champion Indiana, dropping a gigantic New Year’s Day dose of reality in DeBoer’s lap that carried into spring with a litany of boxes unchecked.
This spring of equal parts optimism and question marks in Tuscaloosa unofficially concluded with an A-Day Game that, fittingly, included plenty of reasons to be optimistic and plenty of reasons to question going forward. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle here by discussing some positives and negatives to chew on. Here are 3 of those reasons to be super excited and 3 reasons to be really concerned as an eventful A-Day Game fades and anticipation builds toward a long, hot summer:
Reasons to be excited
We’ll start with the positives, because there’s plenty to like going into the summer.
1. Keelon Russell’s bright future behind center might be now
The battle to succeed Ty Simpson behind center will likely stretch through the summer and into fall camp, and just maybe right up to the final days before the Sept. 5 season opener against East Carolina. This is still true in the aftermath of the A-Day Game, but what also can’t be denied is the talent that Russell showed off for the thousands who made it to Bryant-Denny Stadium. The redshirt freshman was that good as he made his first notable bid to beat out redshirt junior Austin Mack for the job.
While official stats weren’t kept by Alabama in the April 11 spring extravaganza and while Kalen DeBoer told reporters afterward that Mack was playing with a minor injury, what Russell showed off can’t be downplayed. Mack led the first offensive drive of the afternoon, but by the time the dust settled and the sun set in T-Town, it was Russell who had quarterbacked the majority of the offensive series. The final series count was Russell 8, Mack 5, for whatever that’s worth roughly 5 months before the season opener.
Russell piled up 229 yards passing and 4 touchdowns during his mostly electrifying performance, according to AL.com, while Mack threw for just 95 yards on 7-of-13 passing and 1 TD. Flashing a quick release to go with impressive arm strength and an ability to evade defenders with his legs, Russell had a lot working. He threw it an eye-popping 32 times, completing 20 of those passes, and his lone interception of the day could partially be blamed on the intended receiver falling down.
Veteran wideout Ryan Coleman-Williams, who’s already played with 2 different starting quarterbacks at Alabama in Jalen Milroe as a freshman and Simpson as a sophomore, paid Russell a unique compliment while speaking to reporters after the spring game.
“Literally, it just feels like you’re playing a video game when he is in,” said Coleman-Williams, who could already see the difference in Russell from 2025. ” … So, just the way he’s commanded and grown from last year to this year, it’s light years.”
Clearly, Russell won the spring game battle with Mack in the first true benchmark in a series of them that will take Bama fans and college football observers through the long offseason. But Russell’s A-Day performance deserved an ‘A’ grade, which should reassure an anxious fan base as Simpson hears his name called at the draft while motivating Mack to answer back this summer.
2. New name, new number, renewed purpose for Ryan Coleman-Williams
It isn’t the fall of 2024 anymore, and the Crimson Tide wideout who was born in Mobile and starred in high school at Saraland knows this. That 17-year-old phenom who took the college football world by storm a few short years ago is now wise beyond his age at 19. His struggles in 2025 weren’t some weird sophomore jinx — they were very real, dropped passes and all, and that young man named Ryan Williams who’s now known as Ryan Coleman-Williams was on true display for the first time at the A-Day Game.
During the offseason, Coleman-Williams added the last name of his mother, Tiffany Coleman, as a tribute to the woman he called “my best friend” and because he has a legacy to write at Alabama that his mom has a strong part of. As for changing his number from 2 to 1, Coleman-Williams admitted that it was an “opportunity to have a hard reset” leading up to a “season that doesn’t disappoint.”
Naturally, this was 1 spring snapshot with no defensive backs looking to take his head off, but it was a definite step in the right direction for the guy with the new name and digit on his jersey. To start with, there were 0 dropped passes, which haunted Coleman-Williams last fall and led up to him not even being targeted once during the Iron Bowl victory at Auburn. Whether the drops and the 0 targets in the Iron Bowl were directly related, both happened, and his head coach applauded Coleman-Williams after the spring game when speaking to reporters.
“There has been a consistency, and I know people are always going to ask about catching the ball and that is what I am talking about,” Kalen DeBoer said. “I am talking about the consistency there. Not making just the easy ones, making the hard ones as we have seen him get accustomed to and making.”
Coleman-Williams made some of those hard catches during the scrimmage, mixing in some downfield grabs while being heavily covered, too. Obviously, the real proof that he’s truly ready to bounce back will come this fall, when the bright lights come back on and the games count again. But the junior who’s still a teenager took a solid first step toward bringing back those memorable 2024 vibes — minus the old name and number, of course.
3. Lorcan Quinn spiced up the starting kicker battle
Like the fierce quarterback battle between Keelon Russell and Austin Mack, the fight to determine Alabama’s starting kicker in 2026 will likely stretch through the summer and into fall camp. And although the latter competition doesn’t carry nearly the same weight or luster that the QB battle does, don’t for a second undersell how important it is that the Crimson Tide find the right kicker this season.
In the ultra-competitive nature of college football and within the jungle that is the SEC, a strong kicking game can be the difference between a Playoff berth and a head coach on the firing line. Alabama does have its starting kicker back from last season in Conor Talty, but the Chicago product didn’t exactly inspire a ton of confidence during his first year as the starter.
Yes, he made all 48 of his extra point attempts, but that’s where the feel-good nature ended for Talty. Because he only made 16 of his 23 field goal attempts during the 2025 season, which is a hair below 70%, which wasn’t exactly what Kalen DeBoer and many angry Alabama fans were looking for. Talty even missed 2 attempts between 20 and 29 yards, going 4-for-6, he went 7-of-10 between 40 and 49 yards, which was OK but not great, and he missed his only attempt from 50-plus yards.
Talty heard it from the home fans during his struggles last year, even during a 56-0 late-season victory over Eastern Illinois, and although DeBoer had his back and asked those same fans to have his back, it was no accident that Alabama brought in another kicker via the transfer portal this offseason to compete with Talty. The mystery man Quinn hails from faraway Northern Ireland, not exactly the heart of SEC country, and he’s coming off an impressive 2025 season at Marshall when he went 21-of-26 (80.8%) on field goal attempts.
That includes a perfect 5-for-5 from 40 to 49 yards and a not-too-shabby 4-for-6 from 50-plus yards, with a season long of 55 yards for the Thundering Herd last fall. Those were the glossy numbers attached to the former Gaelic football player who hadn’t even played American football before last season. Now thrust into the SEC spotlight at Alabama, Quinn did nothing in the A-Day Game to make anyone believe he couldn’t potentially handle things this fall, twice drilling 47-yard field goals while also connecting from 28 and 35 yards.
And when his Tide teammates crowded around Quinn to add some pressure toward the end of the scrimmage on that 35-yard attempt, he was unflappable, making it look easy. Of course, it won’t be so easy come fall if Quinn does unseat Talty for the starting job, but DeBoer might have just uncovered, shall we say, a pot of placekicking gold at the end of the rainbow with the Northern Irishman.
Incidentally, Talty made 2 kicks during the scrimmage, from 30 and 32 yards, but he also missed a 38-yard attempt. The whole Quinn-Talty kicking dynamic is a win-win situation right now — either Bama has really found a gem from the Emerald Isle or Quinn’s presence is going to light a fire under Talty to win the job once more and answer those critics from last season.
Will Alabama make it back to the Playoff next year? Here’s what the Kalshi market says:
Reasons to be concerned
The Crimson Tide couldn’t escape A-Day without some doom and gloom.
1. Prize transfer Noah Rogers will be out for a while
This was hardly what Rogers had in mind for his highly anticipated spring game debut in an Alabama uniform. The transfer from North Carolina State was brought in to beef up the Tide’s wide receiver room in 2026, but now he’ll be forced to sit and watch for a while. Like, into the start of the regular season, which tells you how seriously injured he was in the A-Day Game.
Kalen DeBoer told reporters on the Monday after the spring game, after Rogers underwent an MRI, that the 6-foot-2, 201-pound prize transfer will miss the early part of the regular season. Rogers was going all out to catch a pass in the end zone when he suffered the gruesome injury. He was carted off the field, and now suddenly Rogers’ status for the 2026 season is murky.
“Unfortunately, he suffered an injury that’s going to take a little while to recover,” DeBoer said during an interview with WTUG-FM in Tuscaloosa. “It will bleed into the season here a little bit.”
DeBoer couldn’t give an exact timetable on Rogers’ return, only that he won’t be ready to play when the season begins but that he is expected to be available sometime during the fall. The injury occurred during a play in the red zone, with Rogers getting tangled up with defensive back Red Morgan. Rogers couldn’t put any weight on his left leg, a brutal sign right off the bat for a weapon who was primed to slide in right behind Ryan Coleman-Williams and Lotzeir Brooks on the Tide’s wide receiver depth chart.
Can Bama overcome this injury, especially early in the season? Sure. But this was a huge transfer get who put up 68 catches for 919 yards and 3 touchdowns in 2 seasons at NC State, and DeBoer told reporters he was impressed with how quickly Rogers “adapted” to Alabama’s offensive system. It’s a tough setback for Rogers and the offense, and now receivers like Rico Scott, Derek Meadows and even true freshman Cederian Morgan will be counted on that much more to pick up the slack.
2. It’s only April, but that revamped O-line really struggled
Alabama’s running game nightmare in 2025 simply can’t be solved in 2026 without the offensive line showing improvement. And right now, as spring football bleeds into summer, the shaky unit that new OL coach Adrian Klemm was hired to revamp is still very much a liability.
The Crimson Tide running game that made last season’s offense extremely one-dimensional was unfortunately back on display in the A-Day Game, and some of the blame for that goes on the offensive line’s poor performance. Yes, the old saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day” definitely applies here, because Klemm inherited a really tough rebuild this offseason with Alabama losing all but 1 starter along that O-line, including stalwarts Kadyn Proctor and Parker Brailsford.
With potential starting guard Will Sanders out for the entire spring, Klemm also didn’t have everybody available in the A-Day Game, which didn’t help matters. But Sanders or no Sanders, the offensive line issues are definitely a cause for concern heading into the summer. Talking about, thinking about or worrying about the offensive line might not be as interesting as, say, the skill positions or most positions, but it’s about as important as it gets, especially if Alabama is going to return to the Playoff in 2026.
“Rome” might not even be a finished product by early September, but that Tide O-line will need to be a lot better than it showed to be in mid-April.
3. It’s only April for the running backs, too, but they also struggled
As mentioned above, the offensive line’s struggles in the spring game trickled down — or back, in this case — to the running backs, who didn’t display much to clear last season’s collective poor performance from fans’ memory. Just as in the O-line’s case, it was a spring scrimmage in mid-April, not an October showdown with Tennessee, so the running backs struggling in the A-Day Game doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll struggle this fall.
But the rushing woes going back to last season are going to haunt Bama until they get fixed, plain and simple. Ty Simpson could only drag the Tide offense so far last year with no running game, and whoever wins the starting QB job this year between Keelon Russell and Austin Mack will likely slam into that same wall if those running game issues don’t get solved by September.
The meager A-Day rushing numbers were what they were. Daniel Hill, who’s dropped noticeable weight this offseason to be lighter and better this spring, finished with 32 yards on 10 carries, according to AL.com — not horrible numbers but not electrifying either. And Kevin Riley didn’t add much, managing just 9 yards on 9 carries.
With injured 5-star true freshman EJ Crowell being held out of the A-Day festivities — he was wearing a boot and riding a scooter when the Crimson Tide took the field — there came a breath of fresh air from another true freshman. Trae’shawn Brown might only be a 3-star guy, but ratings don’t matter once a player steps on the field, and the Tide will accept solid contributions from any running back right about now.
The Huntsville, Texas, product turned some heads in spring practices and did the same in the A-Day Game, registering 25 yards on 5 carries while catching 5 passes for 60 yards. Who knows what Brown could turn into this fall or down the road. He and Crowell could be the very near future of Alabama’s running attack. But the Tide need some real production in the present, because Sept. 5 is going to arrive, at full blast, in the blink of an eye.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
