Greg McElroy breaks down Alabama quarterback battle, compares to past years

For the first time in a few seasons, Alabama has a good ol’ fashion quarterback battle on its hands. However, it is far from the first time that the Crimson Tide under Nick Saban have had a question mark at starting quarterback heading into the summer.

Three quarterbacks are currently vying for QB1: redshirt sophomore Jalen Milroe, redshirt freshman Ty Simpson and Notre Dame transfer Tyler Buchner.

ESPN analyst and former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy broke down the quarterback battle this week on Always College Football with Greg McElroy. He said there is no insider favorite for the job at the moment.

“We’ve been watching it,” McElroy said. “We’ve broken it down. We talked about Jalen Milroe. We talked about Ty Simpson. When Tyler Buchner decided to transfer down from Notre Dame, we talked about that as well. I can’t tell you right now who’s going to win that quarterback competition. I can’t do it. Even as a guy that played there — that has inside information with what’s going on at Alabama — nobody knows. You can ask Nick Saban today. ‘Hey, who’s your starting quarterback going to be?’ And he cannot tell you with confidence who that guy is going to be. It’s going to play itself out over the course of summer and it’s going to play itself out over the course of fall camp. It wouldn’t be the first time that it played itself out into the season.”

The last time Alabama had an intense quarterback battle was in 2018 when Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa fought for the starting job after the College Football Playoff National Championship win the previous season.

But that wasn’t the only time questions about the starting quarterback position have lingered into the beginning of the season.

“Remember back in 2016, Blake Barnett got the opening season start,” McElroy said. “Jalen Hurts ultimately took over in that opening season started against SC and the rest was history. We’ve also seen situations in 2015 where Jacob Coker got the opening season start, had a couple of pretty decent games. Not bad. Then Cooper Bateman ultimately got the start in Week 4 against Ole Miss. They have gone with a bit of a quarterback derby in the first few weeks of the season to try to figure out who that guy is going to be. Back in 2011, Phillip Sims and AJ McCarron went back and forth. Back in 2017, Jalen was obviously the established starter but in the national championship game they went with Tua at halftime, of course.”

Greg McElroy says the Alabama quarterback battle won’t be decided by Week 1

Greg McElroy expects the quarterback competition between the three Alabama signal-callers to not be won by the first week of the season when the Crimson Tide open up against Middle Tennessee.

But he does expect there to be a settled starter for Week 2 against Texas. When that starter is decided, McElroy also doesn’t expect there to be any drama regarding production at the position.

“I would just proceed with caution when you start to declare Alabama’s quarterback situation a quote problem,” McEroy said. “I think they’re going to be fine, especially knowing the type of offense they’re going to implement. Game manager is all that is expected, especially with a run-first approach with Tommy Rees coming down from Notre Dame. The emphasis is going to be on the line of scrimmage. The emphasis is going to be on running the football. The emphasis is going to be on shrinking the game and emphasizing physical presence at the line of scrimmage. Whatever quarterback makes the best decisions and whatever quarterback distributes the ball accordingly will be in a pretty good position to be successful.”