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Kalen DeBoer is well aware of what just happened at Tennessee, and he wants no part of that at Alabama.
The Nico Iamaleava saga has left the Volunteers searching at the quarterback position for the 2025 season, and the Crimson Tide head coach doesn’t need any of those headaches as he gets into the teeth of Year 2 in Tuscaloosa. So, ideally, as the spring transfer portal window gets ready to open on Wednesday, there will be no Alabama quarterbacks headed that way.
Yes, Bama offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb might have divulged on Monday that Ty Simpson is the frontrunner to be the Crimson Tide’s starting quarterback this fall. But that hardly means that the 2 other talents who reside in the Alabama quarterback room right now are expendable. Quite the contrary, believes DeBoer, who wants Austin Mack and Keelon Russell to stick around T-Town and not get sucked into the spring portal.
But can Alabama really keep all 3 quarterbacks on its roster as the portal window opens in a few days?
“Yeah, I really hope we can,” Kalen DeBoer said in the aftermath of Saturday’s A-Day Spring Game.
Now, hoping it happens and seeing it happen are 2 different things, and the transfer portal can be a tantalizing thing for college football players, especially quarterbacks. When the spring portal window closes on April 25, will Alabama still have those 3 QBs on its roster?
We’ll find out then, but until then it’ll be an interesting next 10 days in T-Town.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
