The first AP poll of the 2026 season was released on Monday and Alabama saw it positioned in a place it hasn’t seen in quite some time.
Outside the top 10.
The last time the Crimson Tide was ranked outside of the top 10 in a preseason AP Top 25 was 18 years ago back in 2018 when it was No. 24.
Things have certainly changed over the past three seasons with the retirement of Nick Saban and Kalen DeBoer taking over the program. Even though Alabama has slipped from the standard set by the seven-time national champion, DeBoer has done a solid job of keeping the Crimson Tide competitive and in the mix of the College Football Playoff.
But when Monday’s rankings came out Alabama saw it slated at No. 13 behind the likes of Texas Tech, LSU, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Miami, Indiana, Texas, Notre Dame, Georgia, Oregon and Ohio State.
Despite making it to the second round of the playoff defeating Oklahoma (No. 10), ultimately losing to the eventual champion Indiana and returning/acquiring a number of key defensive players, Alabama will begin the season on the outside looking in according to AP voters.
Is this ranking disrespectful?
Maybe if you asked someone inside the program, but from an outside perspective not necessarily.
A large part of Alabama’s success last season came from its passing game led by quarterback Ty Simpson. However, Simpson has now departed for the NFL leaving an open competition between Austin Mack and Keelon Russell which remains unresolved at the time of the first rankings.
But there are perhaps even more questions for the group in front of Mack and Russell who will be trying to protect whoever wins the job.
The Crimson Tide are returning just one starting offensive lineman from 2025. Intel from the recent scrimmage also suggests that the group has a good amount of work to do in order to right the ship of the offense.
It’s also not as if AP voters were cutthroat to only Alabama either.
Indiana, who dominated the field on its way to an undefeated championship were ranked No. 6 by the voters even putting Notre Dame in front of it despite the Fighting Irish missing the playoff in its entirety last season.
If one doesn’t consider that objectivity, at the very least there appears to be intentionality behind the picks.
Of course such rankings have been rendered obsolete due to the College Football Playoff committee’s which will not be released until November.
So no matter how these factor into the equation, Alabama will have several weeks to prove itself as one of the top 12 teams in the country.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77
