College football's biggest storylines for 2018

Alabama’s QB battle

Nick Saban has made it perfectly clear on several occasions that this battle for the starting quarterback position will go on until Alabama has to put a name on that week one depth chart. Yet, we can still wonder.

Jalen Hurts was the SEC’s Offensive Player of the Year as a freshman and only threw one interception in all of 2017, which is something that coaching staff is definitely looking for, but he simply couldn’t win outside the numbers at all versus Georgia in the National Championship game and Saban decided to give Tua Tagovailoa a shot.

Tua made some mistakes in that contest, but he also brought them back and looked like a much more prolific passer. I already knew he had special abilities and we saw him plenty in garbage time because Bama was up big, but he really showed me something at that biggest stage and wasn’t afraid of the moment. Let’s analyze their respective skill-sets.

Hurts is a tremendous athlete, who can go squatting with his offensive linemen and then run gasses with his wide receivers. As I already mentioned, he takes good care of the ball and he can be a primary ball-carrier with the speed and durability to run all over opposing defenses. He has a whippy arm and his QB rating is outstanding, but he displays inconsistent accuracy and rarely gets off his initial read, if it isn’t for an easy checkdown.

Tagovailoa’s meaningful tape is very limited, but watching him perform in the championship game, you get very excited about what he brings to the table. He shows active feet in the pocket, slides around to allow his pass-catchers to run open, can stretch defenses with the deep ball and makes things happen when nothing is there and he needs to get creative. However, he is also very inexperienced at this level and you only have to look at that sack he took on the first play of overtime, which cost them 16 yards, before throwing a bomb down the sideline for the game-winner.

No matter who lines up under center for the reigning champs, with their personnel up front, they want to pound opponents and have their signal-caller to keep the offense on schedule. It will be very interesting to see which way the coaching staff goes.