Alabama Opens Season with Road Trip vs. Florida State

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00:00Alabama minus 13 and a half in Tallahassee for an opener at Doe Campbell, 3.30 p.m. start.

00:07So I'm kind of, you know, perplexed here a little bit.

00:11I understand the Seminoles were not a good football team last year,

00:15but this is still a really big number for any team to have to go in and play their first game here on the road.

00:22Does it tell me more that Alabama is going to be much better in year two

00:26or that Florida State certainly isn't going to get back to what we thought they would be from a couple years ago?

00:31Yeah, I could really only speak to the Alabama perspective on it,

00:33but around this program there's just so much comfort and confidence in what Kalen DeBoer,

00:38this coaching staff, and these players are starting to do.

00:41In this day and age of the transfer portal, I think it said a lot about Alabama football after last year.

00:46Yes, some players went in the portal in the early window in December and January,

00:50but after spring practice was over, nobody entered the portal from this team.

00:54And with that, you have nine starters coming back on defense.

00:57Offensively, I think this is a group that we will play to the standard a little bit more than what we saw a year ago.

01:03Ryan Grubb is now the offensive coordinator for the Crimson Tide.

01:06He and Kalen DeBoer get reunited after they were so good together at Washington

01:09in that magical 2023 season that took them to a national championship game.

01:14And also Ty Simpson, firmly named as the starting quarterback for the Crimson Tide.

01:18Somebody that just doesn't make a lot of mistakes.

01:21He may not wow you like crazy with his deep arm or anything like that, moving the ball down the field.

01:25But so far in preseason camp, he's not thrown an interception against one of the better secondaries in the country that Alabama has.

01:32So I think with all of that, there's just so much confidence in this Crimson Tide team, especially early in the season,

01:39especially against a group like Florida State, like you mentioned, that's still trying to figure a lot of things out.

01:43They have some new coordinators as well on their end.

01:46So I think that's maybe why you see so much confidence around this Crimson Tide team.

01:50Everything's just so much more familiar, and it truly is Kalen DeBoer's program more, it feels like, as he gets ready for year two.