When selecting Alabama Football starters, Nick Saban has never been deterred by choosing the best players. If a true freshman is the Crimson Tide’s clearly best at a position, Saban is willing to start him.
On the opposite side of not worrying about youth at individual positions, is there a threshold where too much inexperience among starters becomes a liability? Most coaches value experience highly because of predictability. Even when more talented than other teammates, less experienced players make more mistakes in games.
That mistake-free football is unattainable does not diminish Nick Saban’s pursuit of it. A primary goal for the Alabama Crimson Tide’s 2023 season is to be more disciplined and reduce the number of mistakes from last season. Having a young roster makes that goal more difficult to achieve.
Alabama Football: How young in 2023?
A good source for details on this subject is Chase Goodbread. Goodbread recently wrote the 2022 Alabama Crimson Tide went into last season’s spring work with a roster that included veterans with 279 career starts.
That number is far less in the 2023 roster. Goodbread calculates the 2023 Alabama football roster returns 171 career starts. The number of career starts as an Alabama football player is quite a bit less. For example, Jermaine Burton has only 12 starts as a Crimson Tide player. Adjusted to just Alabama starts, the number is 166, according to data from The Football Database..
On projected 2023 offense and defense first units, only 10 players have 10 or more Crimson Tide starts. If Kadyn Proctor or Terrence Ferguson II were to beat out Darrian Dalcourt at left guard, the number would drop to 151 career starts.
Most Alabama Football Career Starts – 2023 Roster
- Malachi Moore – 20 starts, with 10 having been in his freshman season
- Kool-Aid McKinstry – 19 starts
- Darrian Dalcourt – 15 starts
- Justin Eboigbe – 14 starts
- J.C. Latham – 13 starts
- Jermaine Burton – 12 starts (plus 15 starts in two seasons at Georgia)
- Dallas Turner – 12 starts
- Seth McLaughlin – 11 starts
- Ja’Corey Brooks – 10 starts
- Jaheim Oatis – 10 starts
As Alabama football fans know well, the entire quarterback group in Tuscaloosa has one career start.
The Alabama roster is loaded with talented linebackers. But in addition to Dallas Turner’s 12 starts, the remaining linebacker roster has four starts by Deontae Lawson.
The Crimson Tide’s nickel secondary will begin the 2023 season with two players starting their first college games. In the dime, the number will be three.
When Nick Saban uses his standby phrase ‘a work in progress’ to describe the 2023 team, it will have never been more true. Growing pains can be expected. How painful will they be? Let’s just say the Crimson Tide will be more vulnerable than normal in the first half of the 2023 season. And that first half includes Texas in Tuscaloosa, plus Mississippi State and Texas A&M on the road.
Certainly, there are exceptional young players who perform well despite little or no game experience. Hopefully, the Crimson Tide has several of them.