🏈 Why Bama seems to have a hard time finding QB's when other teams are plug and play.

[UAgrad93]

Stop believing the talking heads.
FSU - Starting a transfer.
UGA - Starting a transfer
Ole Miss - Starting a transfer
Oregon - Starting a transfer FROM AN FCS SCHOOL!!!!!!

Im sure there are more, these are just off the top of my head.

I fixed one for you!

 

[Elderfalsedemigod]

Huh? On offense against Va Tech, most of the game was spent looking over at the sideline while the play clock ran down waiting for Kiffin and Blake to get the team lined up. The first few games were painfully unorganized on that side of the ball.

Agree with this but it was WVU not VTech

 

[JoshB]

Am I missing something? Because in 2011, 2014, and 2015 we had QB battles that lasted until the opener that means they are having trouble "finding" QBs? How so? JPW started all of 2007 and 2008, G-Mac started every single game in 2009 and 2010, AJ started every single game from 2011 through 2013, Blake started every game in 2014... That sounds like the DEFINITION of consistency at the QB position.

 

[Tidestalker]

Agree with this but it was WVU not VTech

Goooood Call. My bad

 

[Elderfalsedemigod]

Goooood Call. My bad

I spent 5 minutes trying to reconcile Blake against Tech before I figured it out

 

[Barnabus Stinson]

So I'm going to drop right in the middle of this argument:

We don't have issues finding quarterbacks necessarily, but I do think it is very difficult for a freshman to come in and take over immediately like they can at other school. Going back over the list of QBs in the Saban era:

Wilson - Junior
Wilson - Senior
McElroy - Junior
McElroy - Senior
McCarron - RS Sophomore
McCarron - Junior
McCarron - Senior
Sims - Senior

Every QB we've had (outside of Wilson because of the coaching change) had been in the system 2 full years prior to being named starter. Is the system more difficult to learn than the Malzahn or Tony Franklin systems? Of course it's more difficult. You don't see many high schools running the Saban offense. You see plenty that run the spread option. However, is it so difficult that a young guy can't pick it up? Of course not. It's just accepted that younger QBs tend to turn the ball over more frequently, which is the one thing Saban hates. All of those QBs above, prior to Sims, was labeled a game manager, which is an insulting way of saying they don't turn the ball over. It takes most players time to adjust to the speed of the college game. QBs seem to take even longer because their throwing lanes are shrinking and they are facing more pressure causing them to not keep their eyes downfield like they could in high school. No matter what offense you're in, the speed of the game is a major adjustment for most QBs and you turn the ball over more until you get used to dealing with that. However, most other schools aren't competing for championships every single year so they can afford to run a freshman QB out there and have him make some mistakes. If those lose 2-3 games, no one is going to fuss about it. At Bama, those 2-3 games a year are extremely important.

As far as the FCS transfer Adams at Oregon, it is less of a step up for a QB to go from the speed of the FCS game than the speed of the FBS game. There will be some difficulties there, and I can almost guarantee you that he will not be as efficient as Mariota was last year. That only comes with experience. The other schools that accepted transfers did so because those guys have experience. In another thread it was mentioned that 5 of the past 6 national champions had first time starting QBs. That's correct, but none of them were freshmen.

 

[94 Grad]

How many elite QB's are there in college football anyway? I think it's more a matter of letting them play and compete right up to the beginning of the season and then picking one. Our QB's hare just as "plug and play" as any other teams QB...

I may not be remember correctly, but JPW, Gmac and AJ all three go drafted, correct? How many QB's even get drafted out of college each year (in 2015 there were 80 QB's on the board and 7 of them got drafted)... I'd say that having 3 QB's in a row get drafted (Even if they never made it to start a game) into the NFL is saying something that most teams can and will never be able to say.

I think people expect us to be able to get a Marcus Mariota QB... and the truth is, there just are very maybe 1 or 2 of those type of guys each year and when you're drafting them out of High School it can be hard to know who will be "that guy". We've had some really good kids sign with us and just haven't lived up to the hype of HS. However, that's more the norm for every school than it is the exception for Bama.

 

[Snout Spout]

Maybe we should be running an offense where you can plug anyone in immediately and win 59-0 in a conference championship and knock out the greatest program of all time in the semi-finals. Why handicap yourself?

 

[Bamabacker]

Conservative coaching breeds conservative qb's. I've always thought that we were holding qbs back and they become nervous and may never reach the 'confidence' level needed to become truly great... McCarron was close.

 

[Elderfalsedemigod]

Maybe we should be running an offense where you can plug anyone in immediately and win 59-0 in a conference championship and knock out the greatest program of all time in the semi-finals. Why handicap yourself?

Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar

 

[DLev45]

Conservative coaching breeds conservative qb's. I've always thought that we were holding qbs back and they become nervous and may never reach the 'confidence' level needed to become truly great... McCarron was close.

That's true to an extent. We were a little better about it with Blake throwing to Coop last year than we had been in the past. I remember being beside myself watching Julio Jones not get the ball unless he was wide-a$$ open. If he didn't have 2 steps on his man, he wasn't getting a ball. There I was screaming at the TV that "Julio Jones one-on-one with a DB in man coverage IS OPEN."

Nick Saban has never allowed his QB to throw up a 50/50 ball for a WR and trust your WR to go get it. Even with elite talents like Julio Jones and Amari Cooper. Those are throws you see in the NFL all the time (Megatron, Dez Bryant, Brandon Marshall, Mike Evans, Josh Gordon, Vincent Jackson, Jimmy Graham, Julio, A.J. Green, etc.), but not at Alabama. I don't see why he would start now.

 

[UAgrad93]

That's true to an extent. We were a little better about it with Blake throwing to Coop last year than we had been in the past. I remember being beside myself watching Julio Jones not get the ball unless he was wide-a$$ open. If he didn't have 2 steps on his man, he wasn't getting a ball. There I was screaming at the TV that "Julio Jones one-on-one with a DB in man coverage IS OPEN."

Nick Saban has never allowed his QB to throw up a 50/50 ball for a WR and trust your WR to go get it. Even with elite talents like Julio Jones and Amari Cooper. Those are throws you see in the NFL all the time (Megatron, Dez Bryant, Brandon Marshall, Mike Evans, Josh Gordon, Vincent Jackson, Jimmy Graham, Julio, A.J. Green, etc.), but not at Alabama. I don't see why he would start now.

I'm going to have to disagree on this. I recall McElroy repeatedly trying to throw fades to Julio at Ole Miss in '09. Go look at the Countdown thread to the pic of Julio with 3-4 defenders hanging on him. I think that broke Saban from trying that again.

 

[BigCrimson]

Huh? On offense against Va Tech, most of the game was spent looking over at the sideline while the play clock ran down waiting for Kiffin and Blake to get the team lined up. The first few games were painfully unorganized on that side of the ball.

We didn't play Va Tech. I think you mean West Virginia. What I mean is that (and this was confirmed in the press conference after the game) after they tried to run the full offense and realized Blake hadn't "gotten it" they went to the no huddle shot gun and ran the offense out of that. Consequently not making available the entire offense to them because of the shotgun and the no huddle aspect of it. Saban was asked this after the game and he said they made that adjustment because Sims was more comfortable with that but the problem with it was it limited what they could do.

 

[Justneedme81]

*sighs* Guys.. we have kermit the frog at the Qb... relax...

 

[Killer Instinct]

I blame part of this de-evolution of football on the NFL. Instead of being smart and taking a QB out of pro-style college system like Bama, Stanford, and others that may have not put up X-box numbers but understand the game more like an NFL veteran QB, NFL owners and GM's are guilty of getting caught up in the hype. They see these incredibly athletic guys like $Cam and RG3 and Manziel playing QB and putting up ridiculous stats in a gimmick offense and they all go bat-shit crazy over them. Then they get to The League and they are above average at best. But yet they keep drafting them every year, despite time and again, the Lucks and the Bradys and the Brees's of the world keep steadily churning out playoff seasons. If the coaches grew a pair and told these guys like Newton that if they wanted to play QB in the NFL, be prepared to sit a couple of years and LEARN your position, it's not an ad-lib job, a lot of these kids might not be so quick to jump at the Gus Bus or Art Briles circus, etc. Instead, the NFL is feeding the hype machine, just crank out some more HUNH guys that have incredible college numbers but can't read a defense to save their soul, and we'll keep drafting them because just look at their numbers. It's comical really.

 

[BigCrimson]

I blame part of this de-evolution of football on the NFL. Instead of being smart and taking a QB out of pro-style college system like Bama, Stanford, and others that may have not put up X-box numbers but understand the game more like an NFL veteran QB, NFL owners and GM's are guilty of getting caught up in the hype. They see these incredibly athletic guys like $Cam and RG3 and Manziel playing QB and putting up ridiculous stats in a gimmick offense and they all go bat-shit crazy over them. Then they get to The League and they are above average at best. But yet they keep drafting them every year, despite time and again, the Lucks and the Bradys and the Brees's of the world keep steadily churning out playoff seasons. If the coaches grew a pair and told these guys like Newton that if they wanted to play QB in the NFL, be prepared to sit a couple of years and LEARN your position, it's not an ad-lib job, a lot of these kids might not be so quick to jump at the Gus Bus or Art Briles circus, etc. Instead, the NFL is feeding the hype machine, just crank out some more HUNH guys that have incredible college numbers but can't read a defense to save their soul, and we'll keep drafting them because just look at their numbers. It's comical really.

I get the feeling this trend may start coming to an end. With the recent article about how coaches are having to basically re-teach players from these offenses the fundamentals of the game and the recent episodes of Manziel and RG3. We might start seeing a little pull back in the draft over these guys. It may not be worth a first round pick anymore.

 

[RollllTide!]

Don't you know that CNS believes everyone is watching him and just doesn't want to reveal anything. The best way is to keep things gray. If he announced with great fanfare who the qb would be then the opposition would be prepared a little better. I like it that he sandbags.