Ty Simpson's first career start at Alabama didn't go as he planned or as Tide fans hoped. Minor moments of brilliance were mostly replaced with ineffectiveness. Alabama's offense opened the game with a dominant 16-play, 75-yard drive for a touchdown to go up 7-0. The offense sputtered from there, allowing Florida State to rack up 24 consecutive points before they got back on the scoreboard.
In the end, Alabama lost 31-17, its fourth loss under Kalen DeBoer as a double-digit favorite. Not much went right. There's plenty of blame to go around. The defense mostly struggled despite the preseason hype. The trenches were a mismatch on both sides of the ball.
Simpson didn't get much help from his offensive line. He got virtually nothing from his running game. And star WR Ryan Williams had a couple of drops. Still, Simpson missed plays that were there to be made. He had opportunities to make plays with his feet and instead made errant passes. He finished the game 23-of-43 for 254 yards and a pair of touchdowns. A solid, if unspectacular, stat line that doesn't tell the full story of his performance.
One thing that can't be said about Simpson is that he doesn't have heart. He played with a lot of it. He fought for extra yards. He was willing to take hits and get back up. Whether or not he's good enough for Alabama to be a playoff team is unknown. The effort is not.
Recently, Simpson spoke about how former Florida QB Tim Tebow was his favorite player and a role model of his. In the postgame of Alabama's two-touchdown loss to the Seminoles, Simpson tried to invoke a Tebow-like speech to rally the locker room and the Alabama fanbase.
"I promise you one thing - and that goes to every Alabama fan and my teammates - I'm going to work hard and make sure we get this fixed," Simpson said.
Simpson's words don't do much for Alabama fans right now
Simpson's words are similar to what Tim Tebow said after Florida lost to Ole Miss in 2008, albeit with a bit less fire. After the Gators' humbling defeat, Tebow engineered a remarkable run, and Florida went on to win the National Championship.
Undoubtedly, the optimists among us hope that Alabama can go on a similar run. Unfortunately, there's been nothing in Kalen DeBoer's first 14 games as the Tide's head coach that points to it.
Alabama's players have been pretty good at talking the talk over the last calendar year. They've convinced me and many other Alabama fans time and time again that things would be different. They fooled us plenty last season with in-season talk of returning to the Bama standard. They fooled us again with an offseason full of positivity.
And yet, one game into the 2025 season, and things feel exactly the same as they did a year ago after losses in Nashville, Norman, and Tampa.
This team looks poorly coached again. Simpson did little to inspire confidence that he could be anything but an average quarterback.
For now, saying nothing might be better than saying anything at all. Because you won't fool this fan again.