Jake Coker won a national championship ring at Florida State, but decided to move on. He was looking for something more.

The University of Alabama's senior quarterback could have stayed in Tallahassee, where he would have been part of a team that had a chance to win back-to-back national titles, but that wasn't what he was after. Coker wanted the chance to compete.

UA head coach Nick Saban has been careful to not name a starting quarterback yet as Coker finds himself in yet another battle for the job. Coker started the season opener against Wisconsin, but sophomore Cooper Bateman also played. The battle should continue today as Alabama hosts Middle Tennessee State.

"Nothing has really changed in terms of those two guys," Saban said on Monday. "They've both had opportunities in the game and we're happy with the way both of them played."

Coker will have to keep competing to make the job his own. It continues a long journey to the culmination of a career that has seen him in one quarterback battle after another. But this could be his best chance yet to win the starting job outright.

Coker has found himself surrounded by other talented quarterbacks dating all the way back to high school. Former UA quarterback AJ McCarron was two years ahead of Coker at St. Paul's Episcopal School in Mobile. Some quarterbacks seize the starting job early in high school and hold onto it for years; Coker had to wait his turn.

"Even back then, in his junior year, he was physically a very impressive looking guy," said David Morris, founder of QB Country, a year-round quarterback training company in Mobile. "He definitely looked the part. Then when you see what his makeup is athletically, it's easy to get excited."

Coker didn't waste his opportunity when it finally came. The Saints went 10-2 in his senior year and averaged 37 points per game. Coker committed to Florida State, where he'd find himself in the first high-profile quarterback competition of his college career.

The Seminoles had a star in redshirt freshman Jameis Winston, but Coker was also given a chance to succeed EJ Manuel after the 2012 season. Head coach Jimbo Fisher has insisted the battle between Coker and Winston was brutally tight. During the competition, Coker outlasted Clint Trickett, who transferred to West Virginia and started for the Mountaineers in 2014.

The competition began in spring practice, but Winston didn't earn the starting job until just over a week before the season opener.

Winston made sure that was the end of the battle. He completed 25 of 27 passes with five total touchdowns in the first game of the season. His historic season ended with a Heisman Trophy and most of the single-season passing records at FSU. Coker was the backup before a knee injury finished his year as FSU won the national championship.

Coker found himself looking up at Winston on the depth chart, and the incumbent had three years of eligibility remaining, even if most figured Winston would opt out early for the National Football League.

"He's a class individual. He wasn't happy and I didn't expect him to be happy," Fisher said. "He's a competitor and he wanted the job. He had played extremely, extremely well during that run. It was a tough choice; we had two great quarterbacks and we had to make a choice. But he handled it very well and I'm very proud of the way he did."

As many quarterbacks do, Coker looked for a place that would offer him a better chance to play. Alabama, like Florida State, was a high-profile opportunity for Coker to make his mark. He wasn't seeking the attention that comes at a program like UA or FSU, Morris said, so much as a place to continue at the highest level.

"He's one of the most competitive people I've ever met," Morris said. "He is a guy that kind of likes to keep things to himself, which I think is a good quality. Not a guy who makes moments too big or gets lost in the hype.

"He's a guy that doesn't have a Twitter account."

Morris still works with Coker, and they speak regularly. He's been in Coker's shoes before. When he was at Ole Miss years ago, he lost a quarterback competition to Eli Manning. Alabama was a fit when Coker went to look at colleges for the second time. Fisher told TideSports.com in the summer of 2014 that Coker was "much more talented" than Alabama's previous quarterbacks, and hype began to build.

"I don't mean to discredit the previous guys, they were all great," Fisher said last year. "But this guy is extremely talented. Arm and mind."

Despite his talents, Coker's second collegiate quarterback competition ended the same way his first did. Senior Blake Sims won the job and never gave up his grip on the position. He set a school record for passing yards in a single season and helped Alabama win an SEC championship.

Losing one quarterback competition might have been discouraging for some players. Losing a second could have been devastating. But in both cases, Coker went back to work. He remained a studious backup who was ready when the team needed him.

"It's something that he handled very well and he continued to handle his journey well along the way," Morris said. "It's one of the more impressive things about him."

Alabama's coaches saw Coker react the same way he did at Florida State. He wasn't happy with the decision, but he took the lessons he learned from the competition that served him well.

"I think Jake is a competitor," Saban said. "He obviously wanted to play last year, but I think Jake has improved dramatically because he continued to work to get better: better footwork, better accuracy, playing faster, better understanding of the offense."

Coker's competition in this case has found new obstacles to overcome. Bateman spent time in spring practice working at wide receiver. Coaches recommended to him that he needed to improve his accuracy in the offseason to compete at quarterback.

Bateman went back to work even as some outsiders assumed the quarterback battle would boil down to Coker and redshirt freshman David Cornwell. Midway through fall camp, Bateman had interjected himself into the competition.

"Any player that we sit down with, which we do a couple of times a year and talk about their strengths and weaknesses and things they need to work on, I think it speaks a lot of their character and how much you can trust them if they actually do those things," Saban said on Wednesday. "And I think in Cooper's case he certainly did that."

Coker has also improved since his last quarterback battle. He took the lessons from 2014 and took stepped forward. He finished Saturday's game 15 of 21 for 213 yards and a touchdown. Alabama scored touchdowns on four of his eight drives, and Coker took the Crimson Tide into field goal range on a fifth.

"I always had a belief," Coker said after the game. "But it's kind of surreal that it actually happened. To play quarterback for Alabama is something that's always been a dream of mine. Of course, it's the first game, but it's just a surreal feeling."

It might not have been enough for him to be named the starter outright this weekend, but he's closer than he's ever been. His third quarterback competition could finally be the one that finishes with Coker on top.

Saban wants to be sure before he makes his decision. Coker's journey has taken him years to reach this point. After being passed over twice, the next completion could lead to what he's been looking for all along.

"I think you can name a guy, but if we named a guy and then that guy wasn't the best performer and we had to un-name him, what good does that do?" Saban said in fall camp. "So sometimes you run the risk of naming a guy before he's really won the team or won the job. So then you have to un-name him. Does that do the player any good?"