TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — This was the type of A-Day Alabama fans are used to. A year after an unusual offensive outburst, Saturday’s scrimmage stuck to the typical script — a tough-nosed defensive display accompanied by a few timely big plays.
A pair of redshirt freshmen shared co-MVP honors as quarterback Mac Jones and kicker Joseph Bulovas both had big games. Although, the story of the day came from Alabama’s defense, which tallied a combined 13 sacks and held the offense to a combined 618 yards, down from 730 yards last year.
Ultimately, that allowed the first-team defense to propel the Crimson team to a 24-12 victory over the White team, which was led by the first-team offense.
“All in all I feel pretty good about what I saw out there today,” head coach Nick Saban said. “We obviously have some areas of our team that lack depth, so we’re going to either fix those with players coming in or to improve the players we have. That’s the only options that we have and that’s certainly what we’re going to try and do.”
With that in mind, here are a few things that stood out on A-Day:
Jones is ready for the next level
Might there be another name to add to Alabama’s quarterback battle? Probably not, but that doesn’t take away from Jones’ performance on the day. Jones completed 23 of 35 passes for 289 yards and two touchdowns with one interception, including a nice 46-yard strike to Xavian Marks on his final pass of the scrimmage.
The quarterback competition this fall will still be between Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa, but it’s probably time to start strongly considering Jones as an important factor in Alabama’s offense moving forward.
“We’ve always known that we had a lot of guys that can play that position at a high level,” running back Damien Harris said. “No disrespect to anybody, but a lot of the talk has been about Jalen and Tua. One thing me and [Jones] have talked about is ‘Just every day, go to work.’ You’ll have the results you want if you keep working hard and keep pushing. … I think he went out there and proved today that he can play. He’s a guy that should be talked about with our first two quarterbacks. Hopefully, he’ll start getting the recognition he deserves.”
