Less than a month away from the return of college football, Ty Simpson, Austin Mack and Keelon Russell continue to battle in fall camp for Alabama’s starting quarterback job.
In the midst of an intriguing fall camp quarterback competition, former Alabama quarterback, AJ McCarron weighed in on what the most important factor is in deciding who will win the starting job.
“I think the biggest factor in all of it is who can be the most consistent,” McCarron said on The Dynasty: A Podcast on the Alabama Crimson Tide. “And you got to be a consistent player, day in and day out. You can’t have the great highs for a day or two and then the lows just being at an all-time low, right? For a two-to-three-day stretch, you got to be able to stack more positive days than you do negatives. And then also from a battle, mentally, is not letting the bad days or bad plays affect you and roll over into the next play or the next day. You got to be able to have short-term memory in this game, especially at the quarterback position, running back position, the guys that touch the ball almost on every play. It’s got to be short-term memory. So, you got to be able to, ‘Hey, I messed up on that.’ Boom. Let it go. On to the next play.”
McCarron also said not being able to quickly move on can take away a player’s swagger, something that is extremely difficult to get back.
“If you can’t do that, it messes with the self-belief,” McCarron said. “And then, when your swagger or belief in yourself leaves you, it’s hard to get back in this game because it’s such a grind day in and day out. So, for me, that’s the biggest thing.”
A product of being confident is having what it takes to be in command of the offense. When Ryan Grubb spoke to media during Thursday’s media availability, he pointed out that Simpson is ‘continuing to show a ton of command’ and even said that Simpson did a better job at that than Mack or Russell.
The position battle will continue through fall camp.
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