In 2025, Alabama is trying to avoid something that hasn’t happened since the Mike Shula era

In 2023, it was fair to wonder if a Nick Saban-era first was in the works at Alabama.

In Week 3 at South Florida, Jalen Milroe wasn’t the starter. That came on the heels of a dreadful outing in a loss against Texas. Tyler Buchner got the nod, and by halftime, it was Ty Simpson’s opportunity to seize.

We know how that went.

Nobody showed on that nasty, late-summer Florida afternoon that they were better than Alabama’s QB1. Ergo, the Tide didn’t need to make a true midseason quarterback switch and Milroe returned with a vengeance. When Alabama entered the 2016 season opener with a 3-way battle at the position that Jalen Hurts won by the time a Week 1 beatdown of USC was in the books, it wasn’t a true midseason switch. When 2nd-and-26 happened in the College Football Playoff National Championship, it was a mid-game switch from Hurts to Tua Tagovailoa in the final game of the 2017 season, not a midseason switch.

You see what I’m getting at here. During the entire Saban era, Alabama never endured a true midseason quarterback switch. This year, Alabama is trying to avoid having its first performance-based, midseason quarterback switch since the Mike Shula era.

In 2004, Brodie Croyle’s season-ending torn ACL sent the Tide into a tailspin. Replacement Marc Guillon was ineffective in 2 losing starts, and he gave way to Spencer Pennington, who finished the rest of a 6-6 season. You could argue that an injury prompted that midseason QB switch and that it shouldn’t qualify for this dubious distinction. It still was, however, a quarterback with multiple starts who got benched for performance-based reasons. That’s a bit different than the 2002 quarterback dynamic, which saw Tyler Watts regain his job after a midseason injury prompted the decorated Croyle to get his first college starts.

You get what I’m saying. Midseason quarterback switches? They’re rare in Tuscaloosa.

Last year alone, we saw performance-based midseason quarterback switches at SEC programs like Auburn, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Texas A&M. Shoot, Oklahoma didn’t even make it to halftime of its first conference game as a member of the SEC before it made a performance-based quarterback switch. Texas A&M, meanwhile, did so in the midst of a massive showdown vs. LSU, which was a battle of the last 2 SEC teams who were unbeaten in conference play. Even mighty Georgia experienced that in the 2020s. Don’t forget about the 2020 season, wherein D’Wan Mathis was benched in UGA’s season opener against an Arkansas team in search of its first SEC win in nearly 3 years (Stetson Bennett IV was also later benched for JT Daniels).

There’s no denying that Alabama’s stability at the game’s most important position has certainly been helped by the surroundings. It’s hard to get benched when you’re cranking out top-10 scoring defenses and you run the football as effectively as the Tide have for the better part of the last 2 decades.

That brings us to this year. It’s hardly the first time that Alabama has had an offseason quarterback battle in recent memory. We’ll see if it’s considered a true battle by the middle of fall camp after new Alabama offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb declared in spring that if the Tide had a game the following day, Simpson would be the starter. He backed that up on The Game with Ryan Fowler earlier in the week.

But nearly 2 years removed from his tough showing in Tampa, one can’t help but wonder. Are we sure that Simpson will hold down the starting job all season?

It’s important to remember a few of the dynamics at play. One is that Simpson hasn’t started a game in his Alabama career yet. With a different coaching staff than the one that recruited him, we don’t know what type of in-game grace he’d get, especially with someone like Kalen DeBoer, who hasn’t had a performance-based midseason quarterback benching during 5 seasons as an FBS head coach. Could that be in play with Simpson? It depends.

If Simpson struggles at Georgia in that late-September headliner, one would think that a potential performance-based benching would have to be preceded by some duds. Also, will he further separate himself from Austin Mack and Keelon Russell in fall camp? Mack is in Year 3 of the system, though he just turned 19 years old last week and he only has 3 career FBS pass attempts. Publicly, you get the sense that Grubb is bullish on his development while Russell is being looked at through a long-term lens.

Take that for what it is. I take it as, “Mack at least looks the part while Russell looks like a true freshman and we’d ideally like to redshirt him this season.”

This doesn’t feel like the dynamic we saw at Florida with DJ Lagway, who was physically ready to play in the SEC from the jump at 240 pounds, which was why he had packages put in as the backup. Alabama doesn’t figure to operate like that in order to get a better look at Mack, either. That’s just not been DeBoer’s style. Even as Milroe struggled last year, Simpson still only attempted a pass in 1 of those 4 losses (he was 0-for-1 vs. Oklahoma). That would suggest Simpson could have a decent amount of in-game grace. Week to week, that might be a different story than it was for Milroe, whom the coaching staff wanted to do right by after he stayed at Alabama instead of hitting the portal.

Simpson also stuck around, even when nobody would’ve been surprised if he bolted after the 2023 season when Milroe decided to return. He instead made the decision to work with an elite offensive staff and improve as a backup. We won’t know what 2 years with DeBoer did for him until we see him take the field against Florida State in Tallahassee.

Well, Simpson’s job security will also depend on other stuff

Perhaps it took too long get here, but it’s worth noting that Alabama projects to have some Saban-like surroundings in place for Simpson. It’s a top-10 scoring defense that returns playmakers at every level. It’s an offensive line that PFF ranked No. 1 in college football entering 2025 (I might disagree with that but it’s still a sign that the Tide have no shortage of potential up front). And just in case that wasn’t enough, it’s a receiver room that’s led by 2026 EA Sports College Football cover man Ryan Williams.

Besides the fact that it won’t be Saban leading that Alabama team — it’s still being led by 2 of the most respected offensive minds in the sport in DeBoer and Grubb — that’s about all that Simpson could’ve asked for when he turned down in-state Tennessee for Alabama as a 5-star recruit. If he’s ready to be QB1, it shouldn’t matter that he’s the lone quarterback in that room who wasn’t originally recruited by the current staff.

Simpson’s long-awaited opportunity to hold down the Alabama starting job will be much different than what he walked into as a redshirt freshman in the second half of that USF game in 2023. By all accounts, it should be more favorable this time around.

He’ll have nobody to blame but himself if he ends Alabama’s remarkable run of in-season quarterback stability.

Connor O’Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He’s a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.