It's hard to walk away from Alabama's 48-10 win over East Carolina on Saturday with a lot of complaints, though some fans will certainly do their best.
Alabama has plenty to build upon and improve on, but things went about as well as reasonably could be expected for a season-opener against a quality opponent from the Group-of-Six.
The Crimson Tide had several impactful performers who stood out, but also a couple of guys who may be in line for lesser roles than originally expected. Let's examine the winners and losers from Week 1 for Alabama.
5 Alabama winners from the Week 1 blowout of East Carolina
QB Keelon Russell
Russell will look back at his first start and probably wish he had some plays back. That's natural. It's going to take some experience before he looks like a polished product. But the flashes of brilliance were obvious. He made plays out of nothing, which is precisely what led to Kalen DeBoer making the decision to start him at QB over Austin Mack.
The more comfortable he gets, the better he'll be. He has a big test next week, with Alabama facing its SEC opener on the road against Kentucky.
RB EJ Crowell
It's clear already that Alabama has something special in freshman RB EJ Crowell. His elite contact balance and bend were immediately evident, and it looks like the Crimson Tide was expressing extreme caution with him in the preseason by holding him out of scrimmages. They know what they have in the 5-star freshman, and it's not going to take long before he has a stranglehold on the room.
Crowell was the third RB on the field for Alabama behind Daniel Hill and fellow freshman Trae'shawn Brown, but he scored the first touchdown of the season, bouncing a run to the outside and outrunning the ECU defenders to the pylon. He turned seven carries into 37 yards in his debut.
The craziest thing about it is that he looked that good with limited reps. It's easy to forget he's also a guy who reclassified. He's technically a senior in high school. His ceiling is insane.
WR Ryan Coleman-Williams
Yes, yes. I know. The drops. I saw them too. They frustrated me too. But goodness gracious, the flashes of brilliance when Ryan Coleman-Williams did secure the catch were otherworldly. He turned six offensive touches into 139 yards. He also added a 23-yard punt return.
He's a difference-maker with the ball in his hands. He's got to keep working on securing the football and not catching everything with his body, but there's a reason both DeBoer and Russell expressed supreme confidence in the junior WR in the postgame. They know how vital he's going to be for this team going forward.
LB Yhonzae Pierre
Yhonzae Pierre had a versatile role for Alabama to kick off his senior season. He rotated between the Wolf LB position and the Bandit DE position quite a bit. Despite limited opportunities because of ECU only taking 41 offensive snaps, Pierre was immediately impactful.
He registered his first of many sacks this season, while coming up with a pick-six on a clever play design by Kane Wommack that called for Pierre to drop back in coverage. They changed the picture for ECU QB Mitch Griffis, and he threw it right to Pierre, who then raced to the endzone for his first career touchdown.
OG Mal Waldrep
It looked throughout fall camp that sophomore Mal Waldrep was going to be the guy at LG. But the last couple of weeks of practice saw junior Will Sanders overtake him to earn the start. But that competition is quite clearly not over.
The only rotation Alabama had on the offensive line while the first-team offense was still playing was at LG. They subbed out Sanders after 30 snaps, inserting Waldrep for the next 44. It looked like the offensive line just played better with Waldrep out there. That's something to keep an eye on heading into next week's game in Lexington.
The losers from Alabama's win over ECU
OG Will Sanders
If Waldrep is the winner, it's at the expense of Sanders. It wasn't his best effort on Saturday, but it's important to remember that he still may not be 100% comfortable after battling injury throughout the offseason. The way Ryan Grubb and others spoke about him last week, it was surprising to see him struggle in the opener.
He was swapped out in the second quarter for Waldrep, and it'll be interesting to see the rep distribution next weekend against Kentucky.
RB Kevin Riley
While technically listed as a co-starter, junior Kevin Riley was the fourth running back on the field for Alabama against ECU, falling in the pecking order behind the true freshmen Brown and Crowell. Riley didn't get into the game until the third quarter.
That's bad news for the junior RB, especially with sophomore AK Dear expected back in the lineup in the coming weeks. Dear appeared to be making a real push for the starting job, so it's tough to see Riley being ahead of him when he gets healthy.
That means that Riley is likely to be the odd man out in Alabama's RB room.
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