Nick Saban gives honest admission on how he feels about Ty Simpson ahead of the quarterback’s first career start against Florida State
On Friday, the former Alabama coach was asked to give his assessment of quarterback Ty Simpson ahead of the Crimson Tide’s matchup against Florida State.
The Alabama Crimson Tide are only hours away from their road season opener against Florida State, and after years of developing behind the scenes, fans will finally get a chance to see redshirt junior Ty Simpson take the field as the starting quarterback.
Alabama’s current head coach, Kalen DeBoer, didn’t recruit Simpson though. Instead, that was coaching legend Nick Saban, who signed the talented signal-caller back in 2021. Saban is now working in media, including his weekly appearance with The Pat McAfee Show on ESPN. On Friday, Saban was asked about what we needed to know about Simpson.
“I think Ty (Simpson) is a great young man,” Saban said. “And I have all the respect in the world for these guys that stay in the program for three years, develop and wait their turn, and I think that’s the thing that Ty has done extremely well.
“There’s so many of these guys that grow up now being outcome oriented, and they’re always looking at results. You know, ‘How many passes did I complete, how many touchdowns did I have,’ and then they create these expectations for themselves and when they don’t live up to them, they get frustrated very easily, and that body language is not good for a quarterback, it’s not good for a team.
“So that’s a big thing that Ty’s had to sorta work his way through, not get effected by a bad play, stay focused on the next play cause he’s got all the talent in the world. He’s got legs that are real, he’s a very accurate passer, he’s a good decision-maker, he’s smart, he’s a good leader. So it’ll be interesting to see how he can maintain the consistency in performance that defines success by not getting affected by ups and downs in a game.”
Simpson has experience in college, and he’s got a year’s worth of experience playing in Kalen DeBoer’s offense. What he doesn’t have is on-field experience — or at least not very much. In three years, he’s only played 188 snaps, including just 71 a season ago. That playing time has only led to 50 career passes too, so we still don’t know for sure what Alabama has in the former five-star recruit out of the state of Tennessee.
What we do know is that he has all of the tools to be successful, and the Crimson Tide have done an excellent job of putting the pieces around him that should allow him to be at his best. There was an upgrade with the play-calling, going from Nick Sheridan to Ryan Grubb, there’s continuity, talent and some depth along the offensive line, the wide receivers better fit the system and there’s now familiarity and comfortability with the defensive now entering Year 2 under defensive coordinator Kane Wommack.
There could still be some growing pains early for Simpson, but he’s got the ability and situation to develop into Alabama’s next great quarterback. That all starts with a tough road matchup against the Florida State Seminoles this weekend. Kickoff is set for 2:30 p.m. CT (3:30 ET) on Saturday, and the game will air on ABC.
