Alabama Football: Who does and does not have a top QB

Even having the most recent Heisman winner, Alabama Football will not win in 2022 because of Bryce Young’s individual performances. Game-changing players in every position group are required for championships. Conversely, should Bryce Young be lost to injury for any key games, the Alabama Crimson Tide’s championship dreams will fade.

Many college football followers argue teams without an elite QB cannot be championship contenders.

A counterclaim is Stetson Bennett disproved that premise last season. How elite Bennett is can be a subject of debate, but his performance in the National Championship game was outstanding. Bennett threw for 224 yards against a good Alabama football defense and had a Passing Efficiency Rating of 163.1.

Alabama football fans are glad to debate whether Bryce Young or Will Anderson Jr. will be college football’s best player in 2022. But the Crimson Tide can have a strong defense without No. 31 on the field. The Tide offense without Bryce would be much less than it is with him.

Big arms and strong legs are important for a QB. At least as important is their leadership and decision-making. The decisions quarterbacks make in pre-snap reads and two or three seconds after a snap are the biggest factors in an offense’s success and failure.

Matt Hayes described it well a couple of years ago, saying,

"If you don’t have a QB, you don’t have a chance …"

What Hayes said then is true now – and several SEC teams don’t. Meaning those teams do not have the essential ingredient to winning big games – an elite quarterback.

Alabama Football and Bryce Young are on top

Any list of the top 2022 QBs should have Bryce Young as No. 1. Brad Crawford published one with college football’s top 25 QBs for 2022 and Bryce was on top.

The list is a good one, though no list will satisfy the fanbase of some programs. Georgia fans will not agree with Crawford because Stetson Bennett did not make his top 25 list.

Eight of the top 25, 2022 QBs are on SEC teams. Another eight are in the ACC. The Big Ten has four, while the Big 12 and Pac 12 have two each. One plays for a Group of Five team.

In the SEC, the teams without a quarterback on the list are Vanderbilt, Missouri and Georgia from the SEC East and Texas A&M, LSU and Auburn from the SEC West.

Highlights from the Top 25 QB list

• Bryce Young is No. 1, followed by Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud at No. 2. Caleb Williams of USC and Dillon Gabriel of Oklahoma are three and four.
• Other SEC quarterbacks are K.J. Jefferson (Arkansas) at No. 5; Hendon Hooker (Tennessee) at No. 6; Spencer Rattler (South Carolina) at No. 8; Will Rogers (Mississippi State) at No. 14; Will Levis (Kentucky) at No. 16; Jaxson Dart (Ole Miss) at No. 19 and Anthony Richardson (Florida) at No. 20.
• The lone Group of Five guy is Coastal Carolina’s Grayson McCall at No. 7.

The list is a meaningful clue to how well teams will do next season. Does the absence of Stetson Bennett on the list mean Tennessee and South Carolina, with their more highly valued QBs, will beat the Bulldogs? Of course, it does not. It might mean in those two games, should the Dawgs make enough mistakes to provide an opening, the Vols and the Gamecocks might pull off an upset.

In the regular season, the Crimson Tide defense will face five of the QBs ranked in the top 19 of Crawford’s list.