Defending national champion Alabama is No. 1 in the AP preseason Top 25.

The quarterback who led Alabama to the national title, Mac Jones, is now in training camp with the New England Patriots, but that’s not stopping voters from placing the Crimson Tide at the top spot to open the 2021 season. Bryce Young threw just 22 passes last season, but big things are expected from the former 5-star recruit.

Kirk Herbstreit appeared on ESPN’s SportsCenter Monday to discuss the rankings. When asked why teams with returning starting quarterbacks (Georgia, Oklahoma) weren’t ranked ahead of a team like Alabama with a new QB, the “GameDay” analyst noted that inexperience at the quarterback position doesn’t hold teams back like it did years ago.

“Yeah but I think we’re seeing more teams do more things with new quarterbacks,” Herbstreit said, per 247Sports. “These systems that we see from college football right now allow these quarterbacks to come in without a lot of experience and have a lot of success. Maybe they don’t always get all the way to the top of the mountain but we’ve seen over the last five years guys that don’t have experience come in, learn these offenses. These coaches do a remarkable job of being able to put in quarterback-friendly schemes and you don’t always have to have that experience you did, I think, 10 or 15 years ago. It helps, obviously, but I don’t think it eliminates teams at all that don’t have experience under center.”