Just a Minute: 3 Thing's We're Watching For on A-Day
What will Alabama football look like under Kalen DeBoer?
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 Welcome in to Bama Central's Just a Minute. I'm Blake Beiler alongside Katie Windham.
00:05 Katie, A-Day is right around the corner. We are now two days away from Alabama's final spring scrimmage,
00:12 the final practice of spring football. We're going to go back and forth talking about three things that we are most anticipating
00:22 and things we're looking forward to seeing, maybe finding out about A-Day.
00:27 I'll start with you, Katie. What is one thing you're really looking forward to seeing and learning about on Saturday?
00:33 Just to start out, first of all, me and Blake do cover football too. We've been covering the Alabama basketball run,
00:40 but we will be at A-Day on Saturday. It's important for us to talk about this now.
00:44 This isn't really one of the three, but I am interested to see in general what the crowd is like for Kaelin DeBoer's first A-Day.
00:51 I'm expecting it to be pretty packed. It's a big weekend in Tuscaloosa overall with softball and baseball in town.
00:57 There will be a lot going on, a lot of coverage going on in Bama Central. That's something off the field I'm looking forward to.
01:03 The first thing I'm looking forward to in the game is what everyone always wants to know in the fall or any time before the season.
01:10 What do the quarterbacks look like? Kaelin DeBoer and Nick Sheridan have made it clear throughout the spring that Jalen Illrop is the guy for right now.
01:19 He's taking all the number one reps as the returning starter. It's his job to lose. I'm not looking at it as a battle,
01:26 but maybe just what do the other guys look like? We were talking out in Arizona how quarterbacks haven't necessarily been showing out
01:33 in A-Day the last couple of years. What do some of these backups look like? What does Ty Simpson look like?
01:37 What does Washington transfer Austin Mack look like? What does Dylan Lonergan look like after he got a lot of hype
01:42 throughout the season last year without seeing any time? What do these quarterbacks look like in a new system?
01:49 Obviously, they're not going to be opening up the playbook on A-Day, but we'll see some things that are different.
01:54 That's the first thing that I'm looking forward to. What about you?
01:58 I'm looking at the offensive line. That's a unit that has a couple of returners, but the most part is going to look very different than it did last year.
02:08 On top of that, we've seen a lot of things this spring that are maybe different than some people have expected.
02:14 Parker Brailsford hasn't been practicing a ton. We've seen James Brockermire at center a lot.
02:20 We've seen Tyler Booker moving out to tackle a little bit when his natural position is guard.
02:26 Booker and then Jaden Roberts at the other side, those are the only two returning starters from last year's unit.
02:34 We really don't know exactly what the offensive line is going to look like. Also, Jaden Roberts suffered that injury.
02:40 We don't necessarily know if he's going to be out there on the field for A-Day.
02:44 There's going to be a lot of guys that are rotating in at the first team offensive line that we haven't seen before
02:50 and that Alabama fans haven't seen before unless it's been in mop-up duty or something like that.
02:55 On Saturday, the offensive line is definitely going to look different than it's going to in August or in September.
03:02 We know Kaden Proctor is most likely going to be coming back into the fold, transferring back from Iowa during the spring window.
03:09 That's just another player to add in there.
03:11 Being able to see who is out there, who's currently with the ones, all of those things are going to be really interesting.
03:18 With an offensive line unit that struggled last year but has the chance to be better this year and will have a lot of new faces, what's your last thing?
03:28 I think going along the same line of a position group that I'm looking at, we have some question marks.
03:34 It's really secondary right now and specifically cornerback is who's going to be the other starter alongside USC transfer Damani Jackson?
03:42 He's the only one with any college experience at all, and obviously it wasn't at Alabama.
03:48 It's going to be a lot of new faces for fans and even for us, the media, watching who's going to be out there cornering.
03:56 To that point and to your point, I think it's going to be important to keep in mind for A-Day that yes, this is going to be somewhat of a preview of what's to come,
04:04 but also especially at positions of need, Alabama is going to be hitting up the transfer portal when the window reopens on April 15th,
04:12 which I guess will be just a couple of days after A-Day.
04:15 We already know, like you said, Kaden Proctor has said he's coming back.
04:20 There's going to be a lot of other guys that Alabama is going to get. There's been buzz all over college football Twitter that we're going to see some names enter the portal that we may not expect,
04:29 which also means there could be some guys from Alabama that will play in the spring game.
04:32 Then if there are two or three, it could decide that this isn't the place for them anymore and leave.
04:36 I think we'll see new guys come in.
04:39 For now, I want to look and see what are those younger freshman guys at DB are being considered on one by the coach
04:47 and then maybe how that will continue to shift throughout the summer and fall.
04:51 We're really excited to cover A-Day to kick off a new era of Alabama football with Kalen DeBoer.
04:56 Of course, Bama Central will have that coverage all weekend long.
05:00 That will wrap up today's Just a Minute. Thank you so much for watching.
05:03 for watching.