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Former Alabama QB Greg McElroy: Don’t expect Nick Saban to have QB battle solved after Week 1
By Jake Rill
Published:
One of the biggest topics across all of college football this past offseason and preseason has been Alabama’s quarterback competition.
The Crimson Tide have two top quarterbacks in junior Jalen Hurts and sophomore Tua Tagovailoa. And while Hurts has started nearly every game the past two seasons, Tagovailoa led Alabama to a comeback win in last year’s College Football Playoff National Championship Game.
With the Tide opening the season against Louisville on Saturday, many would expect to have more clarity regarding whether Hurts or Tagovailoa will be the starter this season. But former Alabama quarterback and SEC Network analyst Greg McElroy doesn’t think that will be the case.
“No, and it won’t be necessary, at least not until the Ole Miss game, that’s kind of the way I anticipate it,” McElroy said during an appearance on “3 Man Front” on WJOX 94.5 FM on Thursday. “We’ve seen that before, where he’s rotated quarterbacks the first couple weeks, the first week, and really it’s not until the games ramp up and the stakes ramp up until he decides who his starting quarterback’s going to be. So I wouldn’t be shocked to see both players play early in the game on Saturday, both Jalen and Tua. And it’s honestly just going almost exclusively off of what they’ve done in the past. The only game that I can really remember where he picked his starter in Week 1 was when Blake Sims made his first start [in 2014]. …
“That was the only time I really remember the starting quarterback, after a long battle, playing the entire game in Week 1. But then you look in Week 2, when he actually rotated Jake Coker in there more so than Blake Sims. So this is not something he’s probably going to have figured out here at the end of this game. But I would expect that come time for the Ole Miss game, that’s when you kind of have to have an understanding of which direction you’re going to go with the quarterback position and have the roles pretty clearly established for those guys.”
Alabama plays Louisville at Camping World Stadium in Orlando on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET. The Tide play Arkansas State the following week before beginning SEC play against Ole Miss on Sept. 15.
For more of the segment featuring McElroy, listen below:
Jake Rill contributes to news coverage for Saturday Down South. He has covered the SEC since 2016.
