Biggest Spring Practice Position Battle: Just a Minute
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 Welcome into Bama Central's Just a Minute. I'm Blake Beiler joined by Katie Windham.
00:08 And spring practice is getting really close for Alabama football. The first spring practice
00:12 under head coach Kalen DeBoer starts in a little over a week, I think, if I'm not mistaken.
00:19 And so looking ahead to this spring practice, obviously Alabama's roster has been kind of
00:24 flipped in a way, lost a lot of transfers, brought in a really strong recruiting class,
00:30 have brought in a couple of transfers. But Katie, as you look at this roster and as we're
00:35 kind of transitioning into this new era of Alabama football, during the spring practice,
00:40 what position group are you looking at that has a battle that most interests you? Because
00:45 I know we have obviously Jalen Milrow at quarterback, that's kind of a given. At running back, it
00:51 feels like a given with Jan Miller and Justice Haynes. But at the positions where there are
00:55 more unknowns, what is sticking out to you the most and what are you looking forward
00:59 to the most?
01:00 Yeah, well, first of all, I would slightly push back. I don't want to cause like a panic
01:05 or people to say that I said this, but I would say yes, Jalen Milrow is going to be the quarterback
01:11 until like, I think he's the returner. So obviously, they're going to trust him with
01:15 this. But also, I think that is going to be an interesting position to watch with them
01:19 bringing in Austin Mack from Washington, who's already worked under some of these coaches.
01:23 And then, you know, you also have Ty Simpson coming back. So that's an interesting position
01:28 to watch just in general. Obviously, quarterback always is throughout the spring. It's not
01:31 necessarily going to be a battle in the spring, but it's going to be something interesting
01:36 to watch moving forward. But really one position group that honestly, we have a ton of question
01:41 marks around right now is just really the defensive backfield as a whole. It was interesting
01:47 when you know, Saban retired that first little interview he did with ESPN. He said that Caleb
01:52 Downs and Malachi Moore were two of the hardest people to tell just because Saban worked so
01:56 closely with the DBs and obviously Caleb Downs transferred out. And when you go through and
02:00 look at the roster, there's not a ton of familiar names. There's some guys coming back, but
02:04 really outside of Malachi Moore, there's not a ton of guys that have playing time. You
02:08 have DeWante Smith coming back, who has been injured a lot throughout his career. You have
02:13 Tony Mitchell that played mostly on special teams last year. And other than that, it's
02:17 going to be transfers and new guys. So really, the defensive backfield as a whole, it's going
02:22 to be interesting to see with a new defensive scheme under new defensive coaches. It's really
02:28 the first time and you know, because even with defensive coordinator changes, it was
02:33 still Nick Saban's defense, but it's like we're going to be seeing a whole new Alabama
02:36 defense this year. So I'm going to be kind of watching the cornerbacks throughout the
02:40 spring, which you know, like I'm sure most of you saw on Twitter yesterday, we actually
02:45 are going to get to see a little bit of practice. So we actually, who knows how much practice
02:49 we're going to get to see. It's going to be more than we saw the last couple of years,
02:52 but hopefully we'll actually be able to see a little bit maybe how some of these positions
02:56 are developing.
02:57 Yeah, it's going to be really interesting, especially like you said, with the new defensive
03:02 scheme, Alabama's new defensive coordinator, Kane Womack runs a 4-2-5 defense, which is
03:07 different than what Nick Saban's defenses have run in the past. There's especially with
03:13 the defensive backfield, there are more positions kind of open for grabs for guys. There are
03:19 transfers coming in, Michigan transfer Keon Sabb, USC transfer Damani Jackson. On top
03:24 of talented freshmen, I think Alabama had three of the top five or something like that
03:31 corners in this class coming in on top of Malachi Moore returning, Tony Mitchell, you
03:38 have lots of talent in that defensive backfield, but we don't really know who's going to emerge
03:43 as the starters. So that's definitely a position group we're going to be watching. Very excited
03:48 for spring practice to get here. We'll have all of your coverage on Bama Central. But
03:53 until then, that's going to do it for today's Just a Minute. Thank you so much for watching.
03:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]